Antagonistic Cooperation: Factional Competition in the Shadow of Elections

Intra‐party competition is widespread and affects political parties' strength. This article presents a model of elections in which intra‐party factions can devote resources to campaigning for the party or undermining competing factions to obtain more power. The model shows that inter‐ and intra‐party competition are substitutes: Internal competition increases when the electoral stakes are low – for example, in consensus democracies granting power to losing parties – because the incentives to focus on the fight for internal power increase. Similarly, an increase in party polarization incentivizes factions to campaign to avoid a more costly electoral loss. Factions in the moderate party campaign more than those in the extreme party; conversely, when factions in the same party are ideologically divided, extreme factions campaign more. Finally, the model studies how internal rules affect intra‐party competition, showing how parties design internal contests among factions to maximize campaigning.