This article examines the implications of various voter interaction hypotheses within the collective bias model on the fair weights in heterogeneous voting systems. In such systems, political decision-making is carried out by member state representatives that are assigned individual weights in...

We explore sequential voting in symmetric two-option environments. We show that the (informative) symmetric equilibria of the simultaneous voting game are also equilibria in any sequential voting structure. In unanimity games, (essentially) the whole set of equilibria is the same in all...

We use the citizen-candidate model to study the differential incentives that alternative voting rules provide for candidate entry, and their effect on policy polarization. In particular, we show that allowing voters to cast multiple votes leads to equilibria which support multiple candidate...

Under which conditions do vote-seeking governments pursue reforms in welfare programs that are unpopular among the median voter and that, consequently, likely lead to a loss of votes? This paper proposes reforms may result from a commitment problem of voters between elections. Due to economic...

This study relies on a constitutional reform introducing term limits at the local elections level in Portugal as a natural experiment to estimate incumbency advantage in mayoral elections. It stresses the distinction between partisan and personal incumbency advantage using data on six local...

In 2001, the state parliament of the German federal state of Hesse abolished a 5 percent legal electoral threshold for local elections. This reform had a stronger effect on municipalities with larger councils because implicit electoral thresholds decrease with council size. Exploiting...

Do established parties change political institutions to disadvantage smaller, non-mainstream parties if the latters' electoral prospects improve? We study this question with a natural experiment from the German federal State of Hesse. The experiment is the abolishment of an explicit electoral...