The paper investigates the effect of local electoral rules on the political participation of the residents, as reflected in voter turnout. It focuses on Italy, where municipal voting schemes are differentiated by the size of the city: a single ballot system applies to municipalities with less...

The role of electoral incentives vs. selection is ideally analyzed in a setting where the same legislators are selected to decide on policies under different electoral rules and where voter preferences on policies can be precisely measured. This is the first paper to look at such a situation....

What factors lead underrepresented groups to gain more political representation? I digitize a novel source of data that contains records of Hispanics elected to public office from the local to the federal level from 1984 to 1994 and exploit variation in legal status arising from the 1986...