In a system of proportional representation, we study the interaction between a voter's turnout decision and her party choice, and how these relate to party polarization. Quantal response equilibria predict such interaction effects. In particular they predict (i) a Polarization Effect: reduced...

There are many situations in which different groups make collective decisions by committee voting, with each group represented by a single person. A natural question is what voting system such a committee should use. Concepts based on voting power provide guidelines for this choice. The two most...

There are many situations in which different groups make collective decisions by committee voting, with each group represented by a single person. A natural question is what voting system such a committee should use. Concepts based on voting power provide guidelines for this choice. The two most...

In two laboratory surveys run in France during the 2014 European Elections, we asked the participants to provide their personal evaluations of the parties in terms of ideological proximity, and asked how they would vote under three proportional, closed-list voting rules: the (official)...

In this study, we implement a series of voting games in the laboratory to test whether a strategic voting behavior in a proportional system would arise and induce a two-party system. In each voting game, a finite number of subjects with single-peaked preferences, uniformly distributed on a...

A majority of truth-seeking voters wants to choose the alternative that better matches the state of the world, but may disagree on its identity due to private information. When we have an arbitrary number of alternatives and also sophisticated partisan voters exist in the electorate, the...

Whether individuals vote strategically is one of the most important questions at the intersection of economics and political science. Exploiting a aw in the German electoral system by which a party may gain seats by receiving fewer votes, this paper documents patterns of preference...

Many political systems with direct democracy mechanisms have adopted rules preventing decisions from being made by simple majority rule. The device most commonly added to majority rule in national is a quorum requirement. The two most common are the participation and the approval quora. Such...

I exploit the unique institutional framework of Spanish local elections, where municipalities follow different electoral systems depending on their population size, as mandated by a national law. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare turnout under closed-list proportional...