We speak often of 'representative democracy' and we tend to regard it as the dominant form of government in the modern West. But who or what is represented by the electoral systems of the modern democratic state? Although we may be prone to regard contemporary democracies as embodying...

The idea of proportional representation has been circulating for over two hundred years and is widely practiced, among other, in post-war Europe. The primary focus is to allow smaller parties, minorities and other disenfranchised groups in society systematic representation in the national...

We combine Duverger's Law (1954) with Demsetz's (1968) theory of natural monopoly to provide a novel perspective on electoral competitiveness in a single member district, plurality rule system. In the framework we develop, competitiveness depends on the contestability of elections, which...