Opinion dynamics: rise and fall of political parties

TL;DR

This paper models opinion dynamics in political organizations, revealing how different levels of individual opinion change influence the formation, evolution, and structure of political parties.

Contribution

It introduces a model with competing consensus and diffusive opinion change mechanisms, analyzing how these processes affect party formation and evolution.

Findings

Strong diffusion leads to uniform opinions with no parties.

Weak diffusion results in evolving parties merging into larger ones.

No diffusion produces equally sized parties occupying similar niches.

Abstract

We analyze the evolution of political organizations using a model in which agents change their opinions via two competing mechanisms. Two agents may interact and reach consensus, and additionally, individual agents may spontaneously change their opinions by a random, diffusive process. We find three distinct possibilities. For strong diffusion, the distribution of opinions is uniform and no political organizations (parties) are formed. For weak diffusion, parties do form and furthermore, the political landscape continually evolves as small parties merge into larger ones. Without diffusion, a pattern develops: parties have the same size and they possess equal niches. These phenomena are analyzed using pattern formation and scaling techniques.