District magnitude, personal votes, and government expenditures

Edwards, Martin S.; Thames, Frank C.

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2006.06.008

Cited by 34 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…24 Regarding the political regimes and electoral systems, see Tabellini (2003, 2006) and the references therein. Also, see Milesi-Ferretti et al (2002) and Edwards and Thames (2007) about the district magnitude effects. 25 We considered the electoral competitiveness of legislature (ELECOMP), with countries in which multiple parties compete classified as having competitive elections.…”

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 96%

Growth, income distribution, and fiscal policy volatility

Woo

2011

Journal of Development Economics

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Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 96%

Growth, income distribution, and fiscal policy volatility

Woo

2011

Journal of Development Economics

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“…One of the most established stylized facts in the study of electoral systems is that the greater the district magnitude, the more proportional is the system (see, e.g., Lijphart ; Taagepera and Shugart ). Specifically, the relationship established is between a central tendency of district magnitude and the degree of proportionality in the country, commonly specified in one of three ways: average district magnitude in the country (e.g., Edwards and Thames ; Taagepera and Ensch ), median district magnitude (e.g., Carey and Hix ), and the magnitude of the district electing the median legislator (Amorim Neto and Cox ; Gabel and Scheve )…”

Section: Unequal Voters? a New Look At Parliamentary Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Voters Equal under Proportional Representation?

Kedar

Harsgor

Sheinerman

2015

American J Political Sci

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We develop and apply a new conceptual framework and measure for evaluating electoral systems, focusing on (in)equality in parliamentary representation. Our main arena of interest is proportional representation with districts, an electoral system employed by more than half of democratic states, and we draw on an almost entirely overlooked fact: Electoral regimes vary substantially within countries, with some voters casting their ballot in semi-majoritarian districts of few representatives and others in large and proportional ones. This within-country institutional variation, we contend, affects representational (in)equality. Evaluating equality in parliamentary representation, we demonstrate that districted proportional representation often leads to overrepresentation of voters supporting right-leaning parties. Utilizing district-level data from 20 Western parliamentary democracies and complementing our within-country approach with a cross-country analysis, we further show that where parliaments are elected by large and small districts, representational inequality among voters is greater compared with countries in which parliament is elected by even-magnitude districts.

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“…A growing body of scholarship examines the effect of the personal vote on various outcomes: corruption, economic growth, budget discipline, foreign direct investment, trade liberalization, and efficacy of education spending (Chang and Golden 2005;Edwards and Thames 2007;Garland and Bigleiser 2009;Gaviria, Seddon, and Stein 2003;Golden 2003;Hallerberg and Marier 2004;Kunicova and RoseAckerman 2005;Nielson 2003). Comparative work on legislative particularism has provided many insights, but faces serious methodological challenges that make cross-national comparisons difficult.…”

Section: Electoral Institutions and The Personal Votementioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

Bagashka

Clark

2016

Am Polit Sci Rev

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We argue that state legislative politics is qualitatively different from national congressional politics in the extent to which it focuses on localized and geographically specific legislation salient to subconstituencies within a legislative district. Whereas congressional politics focuses on casework benefits for individual constituents, state legislative politics is more oriented to the delivery of localized benefits for groups of citizens in specific areas within a district, fostering a geographically specific group connection. A primary way to build such targeted geographical support is for members to introduce particularistic legislation designed to aid their specific targeted geographical area within the district. We argue that this is primarily a function of electoral rules. Using original sponsorship data from U.S. state houses, we demonstrate that greater district magnitude and more inclusive selection procedures such as open primaries are associated with more particularism. Our findings provide strong support for a voter-group alignment model of electoral politics distinct from the personal vote/electoral connection model that characterizes U.S. congressional politics and is more akin to patterns of geographically specific group-oriented electoral politics found in Europe and throughout the world.

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District magnitude, personal votes, and government expenditures

Cited by 34 publications

References 25 publications

Growth, income distribution, and fiscal policy volatility

Growth, income distribution, and fiscal policy volatility

Are Voters Equal under Proportional Representation?

Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures

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