Political competition and ideology in formal political econom

The Spatial Theory of Voting is the reigning paradigm in formal studies of political competition and elections. This theory provides the ground on which this dissertation is carried.;The first chapter contains a literature review of the main contributions in the spatial theory of voting. The second chapter presents a model of political competition in the underlying space of ideology. The model is used to study limits of campaign spending, parties association and political convulsion. The last chapter presents and empirical application of the spatial model. Using the Cahoon-Hinich methodology I construct and analyze spatial maps for Chile. I then provide a comparative analysis of the Chilean political spectra in two different and important moments of its history.