The Effect of Electoral Systems on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Sanz, Carlos

doi:10.1017/psrm.2015.54

Cited by 31 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 73 publications

(100 reference statements)

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“…Other municipalities use an open-list system and are excluded from our sample. Sanz (2017) and Gonzalez-Eiras and Sanz (2018) estimate the effects of the change in electoral rules at the 250-person cutoff on turnout and women's representation, respectively.…”

Section: Importance Of Municipal Governments Municipal Governments Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rank Effects in Bargaining: Evidence from Government Formation

Fujiwara

Sanz

2019

The Review of Economic Studies

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Theories of multilateral bargaining and coalition formation applied to legislatures predict that parties’ seat shares determine their bargaining power. We present findings that are difficult to reconcile with this prediction, but consistent with a norm prescribing that “the most voted party should form the government”. We first present case studies from several countries and regression discontinuity design-based evidence from twenty-eight national European parliaments. We then focus on 2,898 Spanish municipal elections in which two parties tie in the number of seats. We find that the party with slightly more general election votes is substantially more likely to appoint the mayor. Since tied parties should (on average) have equal bargaining power, this identifies the effect of being labeled the most voted. This effect is comparable to that of obtaining an additional seat, and is also present when a right-wing party is the most voted and the second and third most voted parties are allied left-wing parties who can form a combined majority. A model where elections both aggregate information and discipline incumbents can rationalize our results and yields additional predictions we take to the data, such as voters punishing second most voted parties that appoint mayors.

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Section: Importance Of Municipal Governments Municipal Governments Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rank Effects in Bargaining: Evidence from Government Formation

Fujiwara

Sanz

2019

The Review of Economic Studies

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“…We carefully address the concerns they raise. Similar to us, Sanz (2017) and Lyytikäinen and Tukiainen (2016) use population thresholds to study political consequences of electoral systems.…”

Section: Identification Strategy and Estimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Institutions and Intraparty Cohesion

et al. 2018

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We study parties' optimal ideological cohesion across electoral rules, when the following trade-off is present: A more heterogenous set of candidates is electorally appealing (catch-all party), yet, it serves policy-related goals less efficiently. When the rule becomes more disproportional, thus inducing a more favorable seat allocation for the winner, the first effect is amplified, incentivizing parties to be less cohesive. We provide empirical support using a unique data-set that records candidates' ideological positions in Finnish municipal elections. Exploiting an exogenous change of electoral rule disproportionality at different population thresholds, we identify the causal effect of electoral rules on parties' cohesion.

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“…Using a regression discontinuity approach and official elections' data from Spanish municipalities, Sanz (2017) shows that turnout is higher when voters can cast preference However, evidence regarding how ballot structure affects satisfaction with democracy is mixed. The first study on the topic by Farrell and McAllister (2006) found that levels of satisfaction with democracy tended to be higher in list PR systems allowing voters to cast votes for candidates.…”

Section: Voting and Satisfaction With Democracy Under Prmentioning

confidence: 99%