IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v27y2011i2p311-327.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: Which is most representative of voters?

Author

Abstract

This study compares the representativeness of voters in the proportional electoral system with the situation under plurality rule. Representativeness is commonly measured by comparing parties' received votes with their shares of seats in the Parliament, this implies that proportional rule should always represent voters better. A coalition within the Parliament, however, rules the country without interference. When a coalition is formed, the pivotal role of small parties and the proposal right of the formateur may significantly impact the distribution of power. Focusing on the coalition formation stage, I demonstrate that proportional rule is more representative only under specific conditions. Otherwise, introducing certain distortions in the distribution of seats among parties can actually improve representativeness.

Suggested Citation

  • Piolatto, Amedeo, 2011. "Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: Which is most representative of voters?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 311-327, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:27:y:2011:i:2:p:311-327
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176-2680(10)00078-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1982. "Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 97-109, January.
    2. Baron, David P. & Ferejohn, John A., 1989. "Bargaining in Legislatures," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(4), pages 1181-1206, December.
    3. Tasos Kalandrakis, 2006. "Proposal Rights and Political Power," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 441-448, April.
    4. Norman Schofield, 1986. "Existence of a ‘structurally stable’ equilibrium for a non-collegial voting rule," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 267-284, January.
    5. Emmanuelle Auriol & Robert Gary-Bobo, 2012. "On the optimal number of representatives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 419-445, December.
    6. Harald Wiese, 2007. "Measuring The Power Of Parties Within Government Coalitions," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(02), pages 307-322.
    7. Daniel Diermeier & Hulya Eraslan & Antonio Merlo, 2002. "Bicameralism and Government Formation, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 07-010, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Feb 2007.
    8. Amer, Rafael & Carreras, Francese & Gimenez, Jose Miguel, 2002. "The modified Banzhaf value for games with coalition structure: an axiomatic characterization," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 45-54, January.
    9. Massimo Morelli, 2004. "Party Formation and Policy Outcomes under Different Electoral Systems," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 829-853.
    10. Menner, Martin, 2007. "The role of search frictions for output and inflation dynamics: a Bayesian assessment," UC3M Working papers. Economics we076235, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    11. David P. Baron & Daniel Diermeier, 2001. "Elections, Governments, and Parliaments in Proportional Representation Systems," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 933-967.
    12. Bandyopadhyay, Siddhartha & Oak, Mandar P., 2008. "Coalition governments in a model of parliamentary democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 554-561, September.
    13. Leiserson, Michael, 1968. "Factions and Coalitions in One-Party Japan: An Interpretation Based on the Theory of Games," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(3), pages 770-787, September.
    14. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey, 1988. "Elections, Coalitions, and Legislative Outcomes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(2), pages 405-422, June.
    15. Diermeier, Daniel & Eraslan, Hülya & Merlo, Antonio, 2007. "Bicameralism and Government Formation," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 227-252, August.
    16. Diermeier, Daniel & Van Roozendaal, Peter, 1998. "The Duration of Cabinet Formation Processes in Western Multi-Party Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(4), pages 609-626, October.
    17. James M. Snyder Jr. & Michael M. Ting & Stephen Ansolabehere, 2005. "Legislative Bargaining under Weighted Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 981-1004, September.
    18. Baron, David P., 1993. "Government Formation and Endogenous Parties," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 34-47, March.
    19. Diermeier, Daniel & Merlo, Antonio, 2004. "An empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 783-797, March.
    20. Riker, William H., 1982. "The Two-party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 753-766, December.
    21. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey, 1990. "Stable Governments and the Allocation of Policy Portfolios," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(3), pages 891-906, September.
    22. Banks, Jeffrey s. & Duggan, John, 2000. "A Bargaining Model of Collective Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(1), pages 73-88, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gianmarco Daniele & Amedeo Piolatto & Willem Sas, 2018. "Who Sent You? Strategic Voting, Transfers and Bailouts in a Federation," Working Papers. Serie AD 2018-05, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    2. Gianmarco Daniele & Amedeo Piolatto & Willem Sas, 2020. "Does the Winner Take It All? Redistributive Policies and Political Extremism," Working Papers 1157, Barcelona School of Economics.
    3. Sonia Oreffice & Climent Quintana, 2009. "Anthropometry and Socioeconomics in the Couple: Evidence from the PSID," Working Papers 2009-22, FEDEA.
    4. Felix Arnold, 2013. "German MPs' Outside Jobs and Their Repercussions on Parliamentary Effort," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1340, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Stadelmann, David & Portmann, Marco & Eichenberger, Reiner, 2014. "The law of large districts: How district magnitude affects the quality of political representation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 128-140.

    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. Piolatto, Amedeo, 2011. "Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: Which is most representative of voters?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 311-327, June.
    2. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    3. Hughes, Niall, 2016. "Voting in legislative elections under plurality rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 51-93.
    4. David P Baron, 2018. "Elections and durable governments in parliamentary governments," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(1), pages 74-118, January.
    5. Montero, Maria & Vidal-Puga, Juan J., 2007. "Demand Commitment in Legislative Bargaining," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(4), pages 847-850, November.
    6. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Mandar Oak, 2022. "Party Formation and Coalitional Bargaining in a Model of Proportional Representation," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-17, June.
    7. Maria Gallego, David Scoones, 2005. "The Art of Compromise," Working Papers eg0042, Wilfrid Laurier University, Department of Economics, revised 2005.
    8. Diermeier, Daniel & Eraslan, Hulya & Merlo, Antonio, 2002. "Coalition governments and comparative constitutional design," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 893-907, May.
    9. Montero, Maria & Vidal-Puga, Juan J., 2011. "Demand bargaining and proportional payoffs in majority games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 395-408, March.
    10. Thomas Fujiwara & Carlos Sanz, 2017. "Norms in bargaining: evidence from government formation in Spain," Working Papers 1741, Banco de España.
    11. Kalandrakis, Tasos, 2015. "Computation of equilibrium values in the Baron and Ferejohn bargaining model," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 29-38.
    12. Montero, Maria, 2017. "Proportional Payoffs in Legislative Bargaining with Weighted Voting: A Characterization," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 12(3), pages 325-346, October.
    13. Agnieszka Rusinowska & Harrie Swart, 2008. "Negotiating a Stable Government: An Application of Bargaining Theory to a Coalition Formation Model," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 17(5), pages 445-464, September.
    14. Orestis Troumpounis & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2016. "Incomplete information, proportional representation and strategic voting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(4), pages 879-903, December.
    15. Tasos Kalandrakis, 2006. "Proposal Rights and Political Power," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 441-448, April.
    16. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Kalyan Chatterjee & Tomas Sjöström, 2013. "Pre-electoral Coalitions and Post-election Bargaining," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Bargaining in the Shadow of the Market Selected Papers on Bilateral and Multilateral Bargaining, chapter 7, pages 129-181, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Merlo, Antonio, 1997. "Bargaining over Governments in a Stochastic Environment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 101-131, February.
    18. Eraslan, Hülya & McLennan, Andrew, 2013. "Uniqueness of stationary equilibrium payoffs in coalitional bargaining," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2195-2222.
    19. Diermeier, Daniel & Merlo, Antonio, 2004. "An empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 783-797, March.
    20. Thomas Fujiwara & Carlos Sanz, 2020. "Rank Effects in Bargaining: Evidence from Government Formation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(3), pages 1261-1295.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electoral systems Proportional rule Plurality rule Voters' representation;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    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:eee:poleco:v:27:y:2011:i:2:p:311-327. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544 .

    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.