Working papers:
Turnout and Power Sharing
Helios Herrera; Massimo Morelli; Thomas R. Palfrey
Downloads:
- Title:
- Turnout and Power Sharing
- Author(s):
-
Herrera, Helios
Morelli, Massimo
Palfrey, Thomas R. - Date:
- 2012
- Type:
- Working papers
- Department:
- Economics
- Permanent URL:
- http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15206
- Series:
- Department of Economics Discussion Papers
- Part Number:
- 1213-04
- Publisher:
- Department of Economics, Columbia University
- Publisher Location:
- New York
- Abstract:
- Differences in electoral rules and/or legislative, executive or legal institutions across countries induce different mappings from election outcomes to distributions of power. We explore how these different mappings affect voters' participation in a democracy. Assuming heterogeneity in the cost of voting, the effect of such institutional differences on turnout depends on the distribution of voters' preferences for the parties: when the two parties have similar support, turnout is higher in a winner-take-all system than in a power sharing system; the result is reversed when one side has a larger base. The results are robust to a wide range of modeling approaches, including the instrumental voting model, ethical voter models, and voter mobilization models. Findings from laboratory experiments provide empirical support for most of the theoretical predictions.
- Subject(s):
- Political science
- Item views:
- 78