후보경선유형이 의원의 이념성향에 미치는 영향 연구: 제 106대 미국 의회를 중심으로

Abstract

Assuming that political opinion lies along a single liberal-consecutive(left-right) dimension for his candidate, and that two candidates compete for election, Hotelling-Downs model predicts that a candidate favored by the median voter will win the election, and thereby the median voter will be represented. In the real world, however, elections consist of two steps: competition for nomination within parties, competition among parties. The rational choice theorists, so, develped two-stage model which depicts that to win the party’s nomination, the candidate is pulled toward the party median; the need to win the election pulls him back toward the population median. Accepting the Two-Stage Model, this paper further argues that types of primary election have an impact on party median. While party median moves close toward population median under the open primary system that allows non partisans to vote, party median moves away from the population median under the closed primary system that disallows nonpartisans to vote. Given this relationship between types of primaries and party median, this paper argues that types of primaries have an impact on policy positions of legislators who want better positioned in the competition within parties. Legislators come from open primary districts show policy positions closer to population median than those from closed primary districts. To test the two arguments, this paper empirically analyzes the relationships between policy positions of the Members of the 107th Congress, types of primaries, and opinions of the district.