The design of political institutions: Electoral competition and the choice of ballot access restrictions in the United States

Marcus Drometer () and Johannes Rincke ()

No 57, Working Papers from Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE)

Abstract: Recent contributions to the political economics literature (Trebbi et al. 2007; Aghion et al. 2004) have challenged the view that political institutions are exogenous to the behavior of agents in the political arena. We explicitly address the potential endogeneity of institu- tions by examining the link between the degree of political competition and the design of ballot access restrictions in the United States. Exploiting exogenous variation in electoral competition at the state level induced by the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, our main finding is that restrictions to the entry of non-major party candidates have been systemat- ically adjusted to changing degrees of electoral competition. As a consequence, differences in ballot access requirements between states are endogenous in the sense that they reflect differences in electoral competition.

Keywords: Political institutions; electoral competition; ballot access (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2008-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Design of Political Institutions: Electoral Competition and the Choice of Ballot Access Restrictions in the United States (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bav:wpaper:057_drometer

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