Election Systems, the "Beauty Premium" in Politics, and the Beauty of Dissent

Niklas Potrafke, Marcus Rösch and Heinrich Ursprung

No 8296, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We ask three questions. First, do election systems differ in how they translate physical attractiveness of candidates into electoral success? Second, do political parties strategically exploit the “beauty premium” when deciding on which candidates to nominate, and, third, do elected MPs use their beauty premium to reap some independence from their party? Using the German election system that combines first-past-the-post election with party-list proportional representation, our results show that plurality elections provide more scope for translating physical attractiveness into electoral success than proportional representation. Whether political parties strategically use the beauty premium to optimize their electoral objectives is less clear. Physically attractive MPs, however, allow themselves to dissent more often, i.e. they vote more often against the party line than their less attractive peers.

Keywords: attractiveness of politicians; safe district; party strategies; electoral success; electoral system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J45 J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-ore and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Election systems, the “beauty premium” in politics, and the beauty of dissent (2020)
Working Paper: Election Systems, the “Beauty Premium” in Politics, and the Beauty of Dissent (2020)
Working Paper: Election systems, the "beauty premium" in politics, and the beauty of dissent (2020)
Working Paper: Election systems, the “beauty premium” in politics, and the beauty of dissent (2020)
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