Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: study of voters' representativeness

Amedeo Piolatto

Working Papers. Serie AD from Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie)

Abstract: Thinking of electoral rules, common wisdom suggests that proportional rule is more fair, since all voters are equally represented: at times, it turns out that this is false. I study the formation of both Parliament and Government; for the composition of the former I consider plurality and proportional rule; for the formation of the latter, I assume that parties play a non-cooperative game à la Rubinstein. I show that, unless parties are impatient to form a Government, proportional electoral rules translate into a more distortive distribution of power among parties than plurality rule; this happens because of the bargaining power of small parties during Government formation.

Keywords: electoral systems; proportional rule; plurality rule; voters¿ representation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 D72 H1 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2009-14.pdf Fisrt version / Primera version, 2009 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: Which is most representative of voters? (2011)
Working Paper: Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: which is most representative of voters? (2009)
Working Paper: Electoral systems and the distortion of voters' preferences (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2009-14

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