We analyze a constitutional change in the German State of Bavaria where citizens, not politicians, granted themselves more say in politics at the local level through a constitutional initiative at the state level. This institutional setting allows us to focus on revealed preferences for direct...

We study the electoral competition between two parties vying for seats in a legislature. The electorate includes knowledgeable voters and impressionable voters, the latter susceptible to electioneering activities. A special interest group provides campaign financing in exchange for influence...

The expression "cash-for-votes" describes a form of vote buying in which candidates for office pay individuals in exchange for their votes. That practice undermines the functioning of democracy but is pervasive in many parts of the world, especially in the Global South. We discuss estimates of...

With elections looming in the Philippines, first-time voters are confronted with a serious dilemma: distrust and doubt with the government; hence, political cynicism. Hence, the purpose of the study is to characterize political cynicism as perceived by college students who are first-time voters...

When collective choices are made in more than one round and with different groups of decision-makers, so-called election inversions may take place, where each group have different majority outcomes. We identify two versions of such compound majority paradoxes specifically, but not exclusively,...

This paper explores electoral accountability in a legislative system that favors seniority using laboratory experiments. Voters face a trade-off between pork barrel transfers and policy representation. The experiment tests term limits as a mechanism to reduce the cost of searching for a...

Elections often depend on the ability of candidates to address issues that are severe and important to voters. If the severity of these issues depends on earlier policy choices, this creates an incentive problem for politicians. An incumbent is able influence the severity of issues in the next...

The essay explains how ranked-choice voting leads to election outcomes that better represent what voters want compared with first-past-the-post, the traditional American voting system. It also shows that there is an even better system: majority-rule

This paper examines the relationship between voting weights and expected equilibrium payoffs in legislative bargaining and provides a necessary and sufficient condition for payoffs to be proportional to weights. This condition has a natural interpretation in terms of the supply and demand for...