Tools of direct democracy, such as the citizen initiative, are available at both the state and local levels in the United States, yet models of the process typically do not consider these institutions in tandem. In this article, I develop a model of local fiscal policy that incorporates the...

It is well known that when all voters in an electorate have preferences consistent with a single underlying dimension, then the electorate's aggregate preferences must be transitive. However, analyses of historical elections suggest that voters frequently view political alternatives (parties and...

This article develops a model of parties in multi-party systems. Instead of treating parties as vote-maximizing candidates able to take any position, parties are assumed to be controlled or at least constrained by their supporters. The model relies on a process whereby supporters sort themselves...

Recent developments in spatial voting have moved beyond finding the most appropriate utility function and started to assess individual differences in decision strategy. The question is not if a proximity or directional worldview performs better in general, rather under what conditions do people...

The efficient aggregation of information is a prerequisite for the operation of a democratic system. In order for political office-holders to act responsively so that policy outcomes reflect public sentiments, sufficient levels of information about their actions must be aggregated within the...