This study investigates the effect of the imposition of term limits on the number of women elected to state legislatures in the United States. It uses a multivariate regression model, which differs from earlier works by utilizing a pooled, time-series data set of state legislatures, from...

This paper estimates how campaign expenditures, candidate incumbency, and voter registration distributions determine U.S. House of Representative vote shares using congressional election data. We quantify the magnitude of these factors using a voter discrete choice demand model similar to Berry,...

How do elite parties win over poor voters while maintaining their core constituencies? How can religious parties expand their electoral base? This paper argues that social service provision constitutes an important electoral strategy for elite-backed religious parties to succeed in developing...

In this paper, we model a patron-client relationship where the incumbent may either persuade or mobilize voters; that is, he can pay citizens to vote for him - vote buying - or he can pay citizens to show up to vote - turnout buying - respectively. Furthermore, we are interested in the optimal...

Based on the second wave of the Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study, we provide the first thorough analysis of how gender affects women and men's efficacy to run for office. Our findings reveal that, despite comparable credentials, backgrounds, and experiences, accomplished women are...

This paper develops a model of electoral targeting in multi-party systems. Seat-share maximizing parties can use policy transfers to win votes by 1) converting undecided voters, 2) mobilizing loyal supporters, or 3) lowering the turn-out of voters loyal to other parties. The model allows for the...

The Bundestag elections of 2009 meant a crushing defeat for the German social democrats. Never before had a party faced losses at such a high percentage in post-war Germany. The paper argues that these losses were not incurred at the margin but at the core of the social democrats' traditional...

According to the responsible party, parties are assumed to present prospective policy programs on to which voters make their choices. The voters are assumed to vote for the party whose policy program is closest to their own policy preferences. The elections are in this context reckoned as a...