Electoral Reform and Trade-Offs in Representation

We examine the effect of electoral institutions on two important features of representation that are often studied separately: policy responsiveness and the quality of legislators. Theoretically, we show that while a proportional electoral system is better than a majoritarian one at representing pop...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American political science review Vol. 113; no. 3; pp. 694 - 709
Main Authors: BECHER, MICHAEL, GONZÁLEZ, IRENE MENÉNDEZ
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.08.2019
Subjects:
20th century
Accountability
British history
Candidates
Case Studies
Congruence
Control Groups
Debates
Disproportionate Representation
Elections
Electoral reform
Electoral systems
Financial Policy
Governance
Ideology
Legislators
Legislatures
Members of Parliament
Minority Groups
Organizational Change
Parliaments
Participative Decision Making
Political representation
Political science
Politicians
Politics
Proportional representation
Reforms
Representation
Research Design
Responsiveness
Scientific Concepts
Voter behavior
Voters
ISSN:0003-0554, 1537-5943
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We examine the effect of electoral institutions on two important features of representation that are often studied separately: policy responsiveness and the quality of legislators. Theoretically, we show that while a proportional electoral system is better than a majoritarian one at representing popular preferences in some contexts, this advantage can come at the price of undermining the selection of good politicians. To empirically assess the relevance of this trade-off, we analyze an unusually controlled electoral reform in Switzerland early in the twentieth century. To account for endogeneity, we exploit variation in the intensive margin of the reform, which introduced proportional representation, based on administrative constraints and data on voter preferences. A difference-in-difference analysis finds that higher reform intensity increases the policy congruence between legislators and the electorate and reduces legislative effort. Contemporary evidence from the European Parliament supports this conclusion.
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ISSN:0003-0554
1537-5943
DOI:10.1017/S0003055419000145