In Situ And Laboratory Experiments On Electoral Law Reform

In the modern era, representation is the hallmark of democracy, and electoral rules structure how representation works and how effectively governments perform. Moreover, of the key structural variables in constitutional design, it is the choice of electoral system that is usually the most open to change. There are three distinctive approaches to electoral system research. One, associated largely with economics, involves the study of electoral system effects through the deductive method, using mathematical tools to derive theorems about the properties of voting methods and behaviors. A second, associated largely with political science, has a primarily empirical focus, and looks in depth at how electoral rules impact on political outcomes, through large cross-sectional or case studies. A third, and more recent tradition, inspired largely by work in experimental economics, involves experimentation, either in the form of controlled laboratory experiments or in the form of in situ field studies. This volume employs the third approach to report on experiments that look at alternatives to the present two round (majority runoff) system used for the election of French presidents. This system is of considerable importance not just because of its use in France but also because of its wide adoption in presidential elections in new democracies, such as Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. The editors have assembled the top experimental economists and political scientists specializing in French politics to provide in-depth analysis of the double ballot electoral system, and, more broadly, of the effect of electoral rules on the number of candidates, voter strategies, and ideological choice. Ultimately, the editors and contributors argue that experimental methods have great potential to inform our understanding of institutional mechanisms in the context of voting behavior.

This book presents a collection of papers illustrating the variety of "experimental" methodologies used to study voting. Experimental methods include laboratory experiments in the tradition of political psychology, laboratory experiments with monetary incentives, in the economic tradition, survey experiments (varying survey, question wording, framing or content), as well as various kinds of field experimentation. Topics include the behavior of voters (in particular turnout, vote choice, and strategic voting), the behavior of parties and candidates, and the comparison of electoral rules.

In the early 1990s, major electoral reforms took place in both Italy and Japan; each replaced a form of “proportional representation” (in which voters cast a ballot for a party list) with a “mixed member” system (in which voters cast ballots for individual candidates and party lists). The reforms were enacted by political elites in the context of divisions within the dominant party, changing patterns of party support, and party splits, in efforts to retain power while responding to charges of corruption, clientelism, and lack of accountability. The experiences of both countries provide a laboratory in which to investigate the effects and implications of the reforms, and, more broadly to analyze voter behavior in the context of institutional change. The introduction provides an overview of post-WWII politics and electoral reform in Italy and Japan. In each of the next four chapters, specialists in Italian and Japanese electoral politics are teamed up to review data both before and after the reforms. Within this comparative framework, the authors explore such topics as changes in party competition, candidate selection mechanisms, and intra-party politics. The concluding chapter considers the longer-term consequences—both anticipated and unanticipated—of the reforms; despite superficially similar conditions, the effects in the two countries were dramatically different: in Japan, the new system has taken hold, with minor modifications, while in Italy, there was a reversion to a proportional representation system. As the essays in this volume demonstrate, to understand why similar reforms had such different effects in the two countries we must examine how electoral systems are embedded in broader institutional and social arrangements, and at the complex interplay of political geography, political history, and the rational calculations of political actors.

This book presents a new democratic theory of election reform, using the tradition of political realism to interrogate and synthesize findings from global elections research and voting theory. In a world of democratic deficits and uncivil societies, political researchers and reformers should prioritize creating smarter ballots before smarter voters. Many democracies’ electoral systems impose a dilemma of disempowerment which traps voters between the twin dangers of vote-splitting and “lesser evil” choices, restricting individual expression while degrading systemic accountability. The application of innovative conceptual tools to comparative empirical analysis and previous experimental results reveals that ballot structure is crucial, but often overlooked, in sustaining this dilemma. Multi-mark ballot structures can resolve the dilemma of disempowerment by allowing voters to rank or grade multiple parties or candidates per contest, thereby furnishing democratic citizens with a broader array of options, finer tools of expression, and stronger powers of accountability. Innovative proposals for ranking and grading ballots in both multi-winner and single-winner contests, including referendums, are offered to provoke further experimentation and reform—a process that may help the cause of democratic elections’ relevance and survival.

With approval voting, voters can approve of as many candidates as they want, and the one approved by the most voters wins. This book surveys a wide variety of empirical and theoretical knowledge accumulated from years of studying this method of voting.

Digital democracy is a hot topic nowadays, its relevance growing along with the impact of computational platforms on our(political) life. Communication is the basal fabric on which society is defined, and it appears obvious that the civic organisation and politics itself should take the opportunities the "digital revolution" offers. Institutional inertia, nevertheless, causes large delays in updating and adapting. Therefore, the balance between participation and delegated representation is now facing a crisis. A thorough understanding of the factors involved in participation is a first step towards providing solutions. Using the Internet to fill the gap and build a digital democracy provides an opportunity, along with several risks that need to be carefully analysed. It needs to be implemented using a fully inter- and trans-disciplinary perspective. The six contributions included in this State-of-the Art Survey present research in the field of social sciences as well as mathematics and computer science and aim at contributing to a better understanding of the potential and dangers of digital democracy, helping readers go beyond the misunderstandings, the misconceptions,and the conceptual and practical abuses that the very notion of democracy is undergoing during this age of technological revolution and social turmoils.

Starting from a distinction made by the American philosopher, John Rawls, in 2000 between two kinds of liberalism, "liberalism of freedom" and "liberalism of happiness", this book presents a range of articles by economists and philosophers debating the most fundamental aspects of the subject. These include the exact significance of Rawls’ distinction and how it can be related to European political philosophy on the one hand and to utilitarianism on the other hand; the various definitions of happiness and freedom and their implications and the informational basis of individual preferences. The objectives of the book are twofold: first, it is devoted to a thorough analysis of the founding texts of both liberalisms. It aims to determine the logic of selection of the concepts which these traditions consider as relevant. The Kantian pair "Reasonable"/"Rational" can be seen as the basis on which these concepts are defined, our final concern being to reveal the profound relations of complementarity between them: we call it reconciliation. Secondly, we consider a fundamental issue of welfare economics – how to appraise individual preferences – in light of the Rawlsian distinction. It is emphasized that neither a criterion based on liberalism of freedom by itself, nor an evaluation in terms of liberalism of happiness by itself exhausts the question of utility. One must combine both aspects in order to cope with that issue. To do so, it is claimed that one can resort to the concept of metaranking of preferences. All the contributions included in this book are the outcomes of a collective research project of three years. The contributors come from a variety of backgrounds and yet are unified in developing a specific position about freedom and happiness. This book should be of interest to those focusing on the history of economic thought as well as moral, political and economic philosophy.