IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/nhhfms/2021_007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Faithful accounting in MMP-elections

Author

Listed:
  • Stensholt, Eivind

    (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics)

Abstract

In MMP-elections for legislatures, political parties compete for a voter’s support in two ways: for a first vote to the party’s candidate in a single-seat constituency and for a second vote to the party’s list of candidates. To obtain party representation proportional to the second votes, a nationwide second vote tally compensates with list seats to parties with a sub-proportional number of constituency seats. The German Bundestag has 299 constituency seats, and 299 list seats is the legal norm, but it got 410 list seats in the 2017 election. This deviation also violates a principle, stated by the federal constitutional court, that voters have equal influence. First and second vote may support different parties, but in the same ballot. The ballots’ combinations of first and second vote are essential for approximation of both proportionality and the legal norm. Unfortunately, the combinations are ignored: The result would have been the same if first and second votes had been collected in separate ballot boxes. Compensation based on “faithful accounting” uses the combinations to represent the set Λ(P) of voters with second vote to party P according to the set’s size, rather than representing P itself, while keeping the number of list seats close to the norm. Another seat reduction, of 42 seats with 2017 data, is obtained if CDU and CSU, working as one party in the Bundestag, also run as one party in elections.

Suggested Citation

  • Stensholt, Eivind, 2021. "Faithful accounting in MMP-elections," Discussion Papers 2021/7, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2021_007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2764395
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mudambi, Ram & Navarra, Pietro, 2004. "Electoral strategies in mixed systems of representation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 227-253, March.
    2. Dowding, Keith & Van Hees, Martin, 2008. "In Praise of Manipulation," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(1), pages 1-15, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernecker, Andreas, 2014. "Do politicians shirk when reelection is certain? Evidence from the German parliament," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 55-70.
    2. Stensholt, Eivind, 2019. "MMP-elections and the assembly size," Discussion Papers 2019/15, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    3. Fedeli, Silvia & Forte, Francesco & Leonida, Leone, 2014. "The law of survival of the political class: An analysis of the Italian parliament (1946–2013)," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 102-121.
    4. Stensholt, Eivind, 2021. "Mixed Member Proportional with faithful accounting," Discussion Papers 2021/5, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    5. Mario Daniele Amore & Margherita Corina, 2021. "Political elections and corporate investment: International evidence," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(9), pages 1775-1796, December.
    6. Ulle Endriss, 2013. "Sincerity and manipulation under approval voting," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 74(3), pages 335-355, March.
    7. Brian Kogelmann, 2017. "Aggregating out of indeterminacy," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 16(2), pages 210-232, May.
    8. Stensholt, Eivind, 2015. "What Happened in Burlington?," Discussion Papers 2015/26, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    9. Stensholt, Eivind, 2021. "The Structure of MMP-Elections," Discussion Papers 2021/9, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    10. Edgardo Bucciarelli & Andrea Oliva, 2020. "Arrow’s impossibility theorem as a special case of Nash equilibrium: a cognitive approach to the theory of collective decision-making," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 19(1), pages 15-41, June.
    11. Stensholt, Eivind, 2020. "Anomalies of Instant Runoff Voting," Discussion Papers 2020/6, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    12. Matías Núñez, 2014. "The strategic sincerity of Approval voting," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(1), pages 157-189, May.
    13. Hugh Ward & Albert Weale, 2010. "Is Rule by Majorities Special?," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 58(1), pages 26-46, February.
    14. Stensholt, Eivind, 2020. "Mixed Member Proportional; equal influence and assembly size," Discussion Papers 2020/10, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    15. Wesley H. Holliday & Eric Pacuit, 2021. "Measuring Violations of Positive Involvement in Voting," Papers 2106.11502, arXiv.org.
    16. Nuñez, M. & Valletta, G., 2012. "The information simplicity of scoring rules," Research Memorandum 011, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    17. Nicholas R. Miller, 2019. "Reflections on Arrow’s theorem and voting rules," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 113-124, April.
    18. Stensholt, Eivind, 2023. "MMP-Elections: Equal Influence and Controlled Assembly Size," Discussion Papers 2023/6, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mixed member proportional; equal influence; legitimacy; assembly size;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2021_007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Stein Fossen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dfnhhno.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.