The Distribution of Voters and the Electoral Consequences of Partisan Violence.

Why do political parties in some nominally democratic systems support militant wings? What effect does violence have on the distribution of voter preferences and consequent party platforms. In this paper I assume that parties care about policies. These parties can utilize violence to escape the median voter's preferred policy as well as effect their probability of winning an election. If parties are relatively immoderate, then supporting a militant wing will deter moderate voters, effectively changing the distribution of voters and allowing at least one of two parties to adopt policies closer to their ideal point. Asymmetric distributions of voters provide both ideological and electoral incentives to initiate violence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]