Gersbach, HansJackson, MatthewMuller, PhilippeTejada, Oriol2024-06-132024-06-132023-12-010022-0531https://hdl.handle.net/2445/213102We analyze two-party electoral competition with a one-dimensional policy space, costly policy changes, and random negative shocks to a party's viability over an infinite horizon. We show the existence and uniqueness of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in which parties use so-called simple strategies. Regardless of the initial policy, party choices converge in the long run to a stochastic alternation between two policies, with transitions occurring if and only if parties suffer a negative shock to their viability. Although costs of change have a moderating effect on policies, full convergence to the median voter position does not take place when parties are polarized.28 p.application/pdfengcc-by-nc (c) Gersbach et al., 2023http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/Partits políticsBipartidismeEleccionsPolitical partiesTwo-party systemsElectionsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article7461662024-06-13info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess