1,721,042 research outputs found
Incomplete information, proportional representation and strategic voting
Full text linkWe introduce incomplete information to a multiparty election under proportional representation: each voter knows her preferences and votes strategically to maximize her payoffs, but is uncertain about the number and the preferences of the other voters. Parties are assumed to be purely office motivated and, hence, the resulting governments are always minimum winning. In this framework we prove a) generic existence of equilibria where only two parties receive a positive fraction of the votes and therefore lead to single-party governments and b) generic inexistence of equilibria that lead to coalition governments. That is, contrary to common wisdom, a proportional rule is found not to promote sincere voting and to be favorable towards single-party governments. The existence of two-party equilibria that lead to single-party governments is robust to parties having ideological concerns
Electoral competition with primaries and quality asymmetries
Full text linkIn two-dimensional two-party electoral competition under plurality rule, there are typically no equilibria, even when one of the dimensions refers to valence. The good news is that the introduction of either closed or open primaries acts as a stabilizing force since equilibria exist quite generally, serves as an arena for policy debates since all candidates propose differentiated platforms, and guarantees that each party's nominee is of higher quality than its primary opponent. Moreover, primaries tend to benefit the party whose median voter is closer to the overall median. The bad news is that the winner of the general election need not be the candidate with the highest overall quality since too competitive primaries can prove harmful. Given the differences between open and closed primaries, we show that the choice of primary type is particularly important and may determine the winner of the general election
Electoral Institutions and Intraparty Cohesion
Full text linkBy utilizing unique data capturing candidates’ ideological positions in
Finnish municipal elections and leveraging exogenous changes in
council size at different population thresholds as a proxy for electoral
rule disproportionality and the expected advantage to the election win-
ner, we identify a positive effect of council size on party cohesion. We propose the following mechanism: if a more diverse set of candidates is
electorally appealing but less efficient in serving policy-related goals,
parties face weaker incentives to maintain cohesion in institutional settings, such as smaller councils, which reward higher vote shares more
generously
Coordination with preferences over the coalition size
Full text linkWe study a coordination game where N players simultaneously and independently decide whether to take a certain action or not. Players’ payoffs depend only on how many players take each action (i.e., the coalition size) and there is incomplete information on players’ types: “Dominant” types have a dominant strategy and care about “enough” people taking an action. “Non-dominant” types do not have a dominant strategy due to non-monotone preferences over the coalition size: their payoffs are maximized when “enough” but “not too many” people take an action. We focus on the behavior of “non-dominant” types and show how the frequency of taking each action and (mis)coordination outcomes depend on the distribution of types and types’ preference heterogeneity. Our experimental results are (mostly) in line with our theoretical predictions: The frequency of coordination failure is not only increasing in the preference heterogeneity —as predicted by the theory, but is also increasing in the share of “non-dominant” types
Electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization
Full text linkDespite common perception, existing theoretical literature lacks a complete for- mal argument regarding the relationship between the electoral rule disproportionality and platform polarization. In this paper, we build a model that incorporates the disproportionality of the electoral system in a standard Downsian electoral competition setup with mainly, but not necessarily purely, policy-motivated parties. We first show that in equilibrium, platform polarization is decreasing in the level of the electoral rule disproportionality. We then argue that the number of parties has a positive effect on platform polarization when polarization is measured by the distance between the two most distant platforms. This effect does not hold when polarization is measured by the widely used Dalton index. Constructing a dataset covering more than 300 elections, our main theoretical findings are empirically supported, pointing towards the electoral rule disproportionality as a major determinant of polarization
Turnout and polarization under alternative electoral systems
No full textThis chapter presents a formal model of electoral competition where parties’ platforms are endogenously chosen and depend on the degree of the electoral rule disproportionality. We first show that proportional electoral systems generate centrifugal forces that increase candidate differentiation. This in turn implies that more proportional systems are associated with lower levels of abstention from indifference. This two-step theoretical prediction of the effect of electoral systems on turnout is then empirically validated even when we jointly control for the prevailing pivotality and party-system size hypotheses. Thus, our work highlights an additional link in the proportionality-turnout nexus
Electoral Rules, Strategic Entry and Polarization
Full text linkHow does electoral rule disproportionality affect the structure of the party system (i.e. the number and the policy platforms of the competing parties)? By studying a model where both party entry and platform choice are endogenous we are able to provide a unified theory: An increasing electoral rule disproportionality exhibits: a) a first-order negative effect on platform polarization, b) a second-order negative effect on the number of parties (as polarization decreases, centrist parties are squeezed between other contenders and prefer not to enter), and c) an additional third-order negative effect on polarization via the reduction of the number of parties. We then conduct a laboratory experiment and strongly confirm the theoretical predictions of the model
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Constitutional Design and Political Communication
Full text linkThis paper models the constitutional design process, and points out the importance of political communication (defined as the level of information about the social distribution of policy preferences that individuals hold, at the time of this process) on the "extent" of "democratic restraints" of the socially preferred constitution and on the welfare derived by the society from its implementation. The results demonstrate that the level of political communication has a positive effect on the level of democracy of the socially preferred constitution and on social welfare. Moreover, it is proved that, even if there exist no tolerance for dictatorship by societies in general, the level of democracy demanded by the society, reaches the maximum possible level, only if political communication is "perfect". That is, the socially preferred constitution in cases of "imperfect" political communication incorporates both dictatorial and democratic elements.constitution, political communication, democracy
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