We examine the extent to which political scandals influence trust in electoral institutions in established Western democracies. The second ballot of the 2016 Presidential election in Austria needed to be repeated because of inconsistencies in individual electoral districts (scandal districts)....

I review the main theoretical arguments and empirical evidence of the relationship between electoral rules and turnout, as well as the puzzles that have emerged from that literature. I then highlight some recent theoretical, methodological, and empirical advancements using subnational data that...

This paper investigates how direct election regimes (à la presidential democracy) affect the selection of women into political offices compared to indirect appointment (à la parliamentary). Exploiting the staggered phase-in across Italian municipalities of a reform to the local institutional...

How much do electoral institutions matter for the rise of populist parties? Evidence on this question is mixed with some scholars arguing that the role of electoral rules is modest at best. This research note provides new evidence for the substantial impact of electoral system change. The United...

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...

We study parties' optimal ideological cohesion across electoral rules, when the following trade-off is present: A more heterogenous set of candidates is electorally appealing (catch-all party), yet, it serves policy-related goals less efficiently. When the rule becomes more disproportional, thus...

We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a "dark side", that is, result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. In line with theoretical...

We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a “dark side”, i.e. result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. We develop a model to predict how...

We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a 'dark side', i.e. result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. We develop a model to predict how two...