Herrera Helios author Morelli Massimo author Columbia University. Political Science Palfrey Thomas R. author Columbia University. Economics originator contributor text Working papers New York Department of Economics, Columbia University 2012 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. Political science 1213-04 http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15206 English NNC NNC 2012-11-07 10:57:33 -0500 2012-11-07 11:06:39 -0500 9208 eng