From Plurality Rule to Proportional RepresentationNo 08/07, ThE Papers from Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada. Abstract: I consider the decision of a parliament that might change the electoral system for the forthcoming elections from plurality rule to proportional representation. Parties are o¢ ce-motivated. They care about winning and about the share of seats obtained. I consider two di¤erent scenarios of how parties in the government share the spoils of o¢ ce: Equally or proportionally to their share of seats. If the government is formed by a single party and parties expect that each party will obtain the same share of votes in the next election the electoral rule will never be changed. That is, for a change to occur the government should be formed by a coalition. I ?nd that a change is more likely to occur when the number of parties is larger and also when the spoils of o¢ ce are shared equally among the members in the governing coalition. I extend these results to analyze the decision of a change from a less proportional rule to a more proportional one. Keywords: Electoral systems; Plurality; Proportional Representation; Coalitions. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gra:wpaper:08/07 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in ThE Papers from Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
Swedish Business School at Örebro University.