Abstract
This study theoretically analyzes the position of political parties' policies and explains the divergence of policies that parties choose. To this end, we build a model in which two political parties decide their policies by considering the effect of media coverage on citizens' voting behavior. In particular, we focus on the difference in each media's political stance as well as on the effect of media coverage on citizens' evaluation of parties. The main results are as follows. First, we explain the circumstances in which parties differentiate their policy platforms. In particular, by considering the parties that aim to maximize their expected votes, we show that they choose divergent policy positions for considering media's effect on voters' decisions. We also show that the equilibrium policy does not maximize social welfare. In addition, we describe the case in which each party chooses its policy by considering not only its expected votes but also the party's ideal policy. We fi nd that the winning party always chooses the party's ideal policy and this policy is realized.
