Integrating theoretical and empirical models of party switching

Abstract

Party switching is a relatively common yet little studied phenomenon. Observers have remarked on the presence of switching in various circumstances and settings, but with a very few exceptions (Aldrich and Bianco 1992; Desposato 2006; Heller and Mershon 2005; 2008; Laver and Benoit 2003) scholars have not seen party switching as theoretically interesting. They have instead treated party switching as an idiosyncratic phenomenon, entirely dependent on context, and essentially sui generis in each occurrence. The contributions to this volume represent an attempt to address what we see as a gap between extant empirical accounts of switching and the substantial leverage that a theoretically driven approach to switching can provide. Taken together, the chapters examine the contexts, causes, and consequences of party switching. Although most of the chapters focus on one or a few country cases, and each chapter examines only a piece of a larger set of strategic interactions in which switching occurs, each does so in explicitly theoretical terms.