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PARTY FORMATION AND POLICY OUTCOMES UNDER DIFFERENT ELECTORAL SYSTEMS
Category: Economic Theory
Political Economy I Sunday 25th August 2002, 09:30 - 11:00, Room: 4.7
Session Chair(s):
Humberto Llavador, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, SPAIN
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Abstract:
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I introduce a model of representative democracy that allows for strategic parties, strategic candidates, strategic voters, and multiple districts. If the distribution of policy preferences is sufficiently similar across districts and sufficiently close to uniform within
districts, then the number of effective parties is larger under Proportional Representation than under Plurality Voting (extending the Duvergerian predictions), and both electoral systems determine the median voter’s preferred policy outcome. However, for
more asymmetric distributions of preferences the comparative results are very different; the Duvergerian predictions can be reversed; compared with the median voter’s preferred
policy, the outcome with Proportional Representation can be biased only towards the center, whereas under Plurality Voting the policy outcome can be anywhere. The sincere vs. strategic voting issue is welfare irrelevant, but sincere voting induces more party
formation.
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Find this file in the \Papers\49\ folder of this CD-ROM.
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