Electoral Rules and Political Selection: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan

Andrew Beath, Fotini Christia, Georgy Egorov and Ruben Enikolopov

The Review of Economic Studies, 2016, vol. 83, issue 3, 932-968

Abstract: Voters commonly face a choice between competent candidates and those with policy preferences similar to their own. This article explores how electoral rules, such as district magnitude, mediate this trade-off and affect the composition of representative bodies and the quality of policy outcomes. We show formally that anticipation of bargaining over policy causes voters in elections with multiple single-member districts to prefer candidates with polarized policy positions over more competent candidates. Results from a unique field experiment in Afghanistan are consistent with these predictions. Specifically, representatives selected by elections with a single multi-member district are better educated and exhibit less extreme policy preferences.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdw018 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:restud:v:83:y:2016:i:3:p:932-968.

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economic Studies is currently edited by Thomas Chaney, Xavier d’Haultfoeuille, Andrea Galeotti, Bård Harstad, Nir Jaimovich, Katrine Loken, Elias Papaioannou, Vincent Sterk and Noam Yuchtman

More articles in The Review of Economic Studies from Review of Economic Studies Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().