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How do political parties share power internally? We study the internal organization of political parties as the solution of a moral hazard problem between a party conference and its factions. Factions' mobilization efforts benefit the party electorally, but can only be imperfectly monitored. In contrast with the logic of Michel's Iron Law, we provide a functionalist rationale for intraparty power sharing: We show that internal power sharing can enhance a party's electoral performance. This effect is stronger in settings that award more resources to election winners: Low interparty power sharing produces high intraparty power sharing. We also show that intraparty power sharing should be more frequent within smaller parties, when monitoring of factional effort is more precise (e.g., preferential voting systems), and when factions' ideological disagreements span multiple dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent political developments worldwide have focused attention on the fraying of political norms, often understood as informal restraints on opportunistic behavior. We present a model to study how norms of restraint interact with institutional checks and balances. In the model, an election determines which party holds office in each period over an infinite horizon. Each period presents the majority party with an opportunity to modify a status quo policy. However, informal norms and formal institutional barriers limit its ability to do so by providing soft and hard constraints to policymaking, respectively. We show that political cooperation can be easier to sustain in political systems with fewer checks and balances, when political norms are sufficiently stringent. Under optimal norms, increasing polarization makes norms easier to uphold, while also reducing welfare. Finally, norms maintained by minority parties are less sustainable, and voter optimal norms require minority concessions to achieve greater electoral competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does exposure to conspiracy theories affects voters' political attitudes? Using an online experiment among US subjects, we show that exposure to conspiracy theories decreases voters' trust in the domestic informational environment. Subjects were exposed to conspiracy theories that are entirely unrelated to American domestic politics, which further underscores such narratives' danger. However, we fail to reject the null hypothesis that voters do not weigh unrelated conspiracies in their evaluation of politicians' performance and domestic political institutions. Overall, our findings illustrate that an informational environment permeated by conspiracy theories could impede the functioning of democracy by eroding trust in information providers and undermining the credibility of political information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intra‐party competition is widespread and affects political parties' strength. This article presents a model of elections in which intra‐party factions can devote resources to campaigning for the party or undermining competing factions to obtain more power. The model shows that inter‐ and intra‐party competition are substitutes: Internal competition increases when the electoral stakes are low – for example, in consensus democracies granting power to losing parties – because the incentives to focus on the fight for internal power increase. Similarly, an increase in party polarization incentivizes factions to campaign to avoid a more costly electoral loss. Factions in the moderate party campaign more than those in the extreme party; conversely, when factions in the same party are ideologically divided, extreme factions campaign more. Finally, the model studies how internal rules affect intra‐party competition, showing how parties design internal contests among factions to maximize campaigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]