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Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions
Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems
This book investigates strategic coordination in elections worldwide. Although the classics of electoral studies have dealt with issues of coordination, this is the first book that employs a unified game-theoretic model to study strategic coordination--including both strategic voting and strategic entry--worldwide and that relies primarily on constituency-level rather than national aggregate data in testing theoretical propositions about the effects of electoral laws.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 2, 2020
A bit of a slog, but it was nice to read some honest to goodness political science
February 7, 2016
This is a game theoretic look at how electoral systems shape the behavior of candidates, voters, and parties, expanding on Duverger’s earlier analysis suggesting that single-member plurality contests generally tend to produce two-party competitions (or bipartism); or as formulated more generally here, there can only be M+1 viable candidates in a constituency of magnitude M.
The question of how electoral votes will translate into seats in the legislature or government as the element which shapes the collective response by candidates, parties, and voters. Voters (or elites controlling political resources, or party organizations) who do not wish to see their votes wasted on candidates that have no chance of securing a plurality, and who have some preference between the more viable alternatives, will desert non-viable candidates, which further diminishes their support and leaves them with at best, only a small core of supporters.
The author also spends some time expanding Duverger's largely assumed linkage between a the electoral contest that produces a two-party system at the local level, and the formation of the two-party system at the national level, which he primarily attributes to elections for the national executive that also encourage bipartism, and thus coalition formation amongst legislators.
While I ended up glossing over some of the more mathematical proof-heavy sections, I did find this very useful and fairly clear as a guide for understanding the basic components of an electoral system, and a comparisons between the taxonomy of electoral systems (the main ones of interest for me being single member plurality, proportional representation, and single non-transferrable vote, as well as single-ballot versus dual-ballot runoffs).
The main value I think was actually in more clearly identifying the conditions in which strategic voting / bipartism does not occur and there is a “coordination failure” — namely cases where voters have intense first-choice preferences and do not care about ranking the alternatives; cases where voters are not participating out of a short-term rational interest in the election outcome but for other purposes, such as solidarity; strong certainty in the outcome that precludes any need to abandon one’s first preference; or lack of any clear information about voter intentions.
While I do subscribe to the notion that systems and institutions generally structure our choices, I think many of these conditions apply in many of electoral contests I’ve worked on in the past, suggesting a limited applicability for the overall theory. But it was a useful reference text and may help identify issues for future study.
The question of how electoral votes will translate into seats in the legislature or government as the element which shapes the collective response by candidates, parties, and voters. Voters (or elites controlling political resources, or party organizations) who do not wish to see their votes wasted on candidates that have no chance of securing a plurality, and who have some preference between the more viable alternatives, will desert non-viable candidates, which further diminishes their support and leaves them with at best, only a small core of supporters.
The author also spends some time expanding Duverger's largely assumed linkage between a the electoral contest that produces a two-party system at the local level, and the formation of the two-party system at the national level, which he primarily attributes to elections for the national executive that also encourage bipartism, and thus coalition formation amongst legislators.
While I ended up glossing over some of the more mathematical proof-heavy sections, I did find this very useful and fairly clear as a guide for understanding the basic components of an electoral system, and a comparisons between the taxonomy of electoral systems (the main ones of interest for me being single member plurality, proportional representation, and single non-transferrable vote, as well as single-ballot versus dual-ballot runoffs).
The main value I think was actually in more clearly identifying the conditions in which strategic voting / bipartism does not occur and there is a “coordination failure” — namely cases where voters have intense first-choice preferences and do not care about ranking the alternatives; cases where voters are not participating out of a short-term rational interest in the election outcome but for other purposes, such as solidarity; strong certainty in the outcome that precludes any need to abandon one’s first preference; or lack of any clear information about voter intentions.
While I do subscribe to the notion that systems and institutions generally structure our choices, I think many of these conditions apply in many of electoral contests I’ve worked on in the past, suggesting a limited applicability for the overall theory. But it was a useful reference text and may help identify issues for future study.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews