The origins of electoral systems have received scant attention in the literature. Looking at the history of electoral rules in the advanced world in the last century, this paper shows that the existing wide variation in electoral rules across nations can be traced to the strategic decisions that...

We present voters' self-placement and 68 political party locations on the left-right dimension in 17 Latin American countries. Innovative calculations are based on data from Latinobarometer annual surveys from 1995 to 2002. Our preliminary analysis of the results suggests that most Latin...

This article presents a formal model of policy decision-making in an institutional framework of separation of powers in which the main actors are pivotal political parties with voting discipline. The basic model previously developed from pivotal politics theory for the analysis of the United...

This article presents, discusses and tests the hypothesis that it is the number of parties what can explain the choice of electoral systems, rather than the other way round. Already existing political parties tend to choose electoral systems that, rather than generate new party systems by...

The old, understudied electoral system composed of multi-member districts, open ballot and plurality rule is presented as the most remote scene of the origin of both political parties and new electoral systems. A survey of the uses of this set of electoral rules in different parts of the world...

We systematically analyze how variations in board independence and ownership concentration and type affect corporate social performance (CSP). Drawing from the agency and stakeholder perspectives, we argue that recognizing differences in the distribution of costs and benefits to shareholders and...

Moral codes are produced and enforced by more or less specialized means and are subject to standard economic forces. This paper argues that the intermediary role played by the Catholic Church between God and Christians, a key difference from Protestantism, faces the standard trade-off of...