The emergence of new political parties from a game theoretic perspective

The literature on new political parties is vast but often neglects strategic aspects that are important in the formation period. In this article I develop a simple incomplete information game consisting of the interactions between an established party and a potential new party. The game shows that higher ‘costs’ for forming a party decrease the likelihood of new actors appearing on the electoral scene. Apart from this intuitive result the paper also shows that important demands from potential new parties are less likely to be taken seriously by the established party than more modest demands. Consequently, established parties often change their policies only marginally and are likely to refuse important modifications to their platform.