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Across representative democracies, there is a strong variation in the rules that govern the electoral process. A classic insight in political science is that these rules, e.g., the presence of a majoritarian or a proportional system have a profound effect on the way a democracy functions. We know less however, about the way voters actually respond to these electoral rules. This kind of effect presupposes that voters not only are aware of the electoral system, but also that they adapt to the incentives offered by the system. In this volume, a group of international scholars investigate whether this is indeed the case. The various chapters in this volume deal with the effect of proportionality, mixed-member systems, compulsory voting and preferential voting. The chapters are based on recent data and state-of-the-art methods. The introduction confronts the findings of the various chapters with the allegedly universal validity of vote choice models in the literature. The research presented in this volume mainly deals with elections in Europe, but the findings speak to the broader community of electoral scholars. The chapters originally published as a special issue in West European Politics.
List of contents
1. Do electoral rules have an effect on electoral behaviour? An impact assessment Ruth Dassonneville, Marc Hooghe and Michael S. Lewis-Beck 2. Candidate-centred electoral systems and voter turnout Peter Söderlund 3. Rules, institutions and the economic vote: clarifying clarity of responsibility Ruth Dassonneville and Michael S. Lewis-Beck 4. The electoral consequences of austerity: economic policy voting in Europe in times of crisis Liisa Talving 5. Ticket-splitting in mixed-member systems: on the importance of seat linkage between electoral tiers Pedro Riera and Damien Bol 6. Too much choice, too little impact: a multilevel analysis of the contextual determinants of preference voting Audrey André and Sam Depauw 7. The impact of compulsory voting on inequality and the quality of the vote Ruth Dassonneville, Marc Hooghe and Peter Miller
About the author
Ruth Dassonneville is Assistant Professor at the Université de Montréal, Canada.
Marc Hooghe is Professor of Political Science at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
Michael S. Lewis-Beck is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor at the University of Iowa, USA.
Summary
This volume investigates empirically whether voters behave differently, given different sets of electoral rules. The findings challenge some common vote choice models. The chapters originally published as a special issue in West European Politics.
