IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/copoec/v34y2023i3d10.1007_s10602-022-09386-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The case for the five in final five voting

Author

Listed:
  • Katherine Gehl

    (Institute for Political Innovation)

Abstract

My central concern is not, which electoral system would elect the best winner, but rather: which electoral system would be most likely to elect a Congress that would deliver optimal democratic outcomes? I use a theory of politics as an industry, first presented in Gehl & Porter (2017), that analyzes incentives and behaviors through the lens of competition. I argue that the optimal system is Final Five Voting (FFV), which is the combination of an open top-five primary and instant runoff voting (IRV) in the general election. Open, non-partisan primaries that select two candidates exist in California and Washington, while Alaska elects four in its open primary. Here I explain why the optimal number of candidates to advance from the primary to the general election is five.

Suggested Citation

  • Katherine Gehl, 2023. "The case for the five in final five voting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 286-296, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:34:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10602-022-09386-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10602-022-09386-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10602-022-09386-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10602-022-09386-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin J. Osborne, 1995. "Spatial Models of Political Competition under Plurality Rule: A Survey of Some Explanations of the Number of Candidates and the Positions They Take," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 28(2), pages 261-301, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcus Ogren, 2023. "Candidate Incentive Distributions: How voting methods shape electoral incentives," Papers 2306.07147, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    2. Jaideep Roy & Marcin Dziubinski, 2008. "Electoral Competition amongst Citizen-candidates and Downsian Politicians," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 08-10, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    3. Arnaud Dellis, 2022. "Does Party Polarization Affect the Electoral Prospects of a New Centrist Candidate?," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, July.
    4. Fabian Gouret & Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2011. "An empirical analysis of valence in electoral competition," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 309-340, July.
    5. Leonie Geyer & Patrick Mellacher, 2024. "Simulating Party Competition in Dynamic Voter Distributions," Graz Economics Papers 2024-19, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    6. Stefan Krasa & Mattias Polborn, 2007. "Majority-efficiency and Competition-efficiency in a Binary Policy Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 1958, CESifo.
    7. Guillaume Hollard & Stéphane Rossignol, 2008. "An Alternative Approach to Valence Advantage in Spatial Competition," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(3), pages 441-454, June.
    8. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2010. "Competition between Specialized Candidates," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 104(4), pages 745-765, November.
    9. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Priming Ideology: Why Presidential Elections Affect U.S. Judges," TSE Working Papers 16-681, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Aug 2016.
    10. Marco Haan, 2000. "Endogenous Party Formation in a Model of Representative Democracy," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0598, Econometric Society.
    11. Leonardo Becchetti & Gianluigi Conzo, 2023. "The Wind of Populism: Voter Turnout and Political Distance," CEIS Research Paper 569, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 19 Dec 2023.
    12. Katsuya Kobayashi & Hideo Konishi, 2016. "Endogenous party structure," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 317-351, November.
    13. Selim Jürgen Ergun, 2015. "Centrist’S Curse? An Electoral Competition Model With Credibility Constraints," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 60(05), pages 1-18, December.
    14. Westermark, Andreas, 2004. "Extremism, campaigning and ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 421-452, May.
    15. Sandro Brusco & Jaideep Roy, 2011. "Aggregate uncertainty in the citizen candidate model yields extremist parties," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(1), pages 83-104, January.
    16. Conze, Maximilian & Kramm, Michael, 2013. "The Recommendation Effect in the Hotelling Game - A New Result for an Old Model," Ruhr Economic Papers 460, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    17. Bugarin, Maurício & Portugal, Adriana & Sakurai, Sérgio, 2008. "Inequality and Cost of Electoral Campaigns in Latin America," Insper Working Papers wpe_152, Insper Working Paper, Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.
    18. Cheung, Man-Wah & Wu, Jiabin, 2018. "On the probabilistic transmission of continuous cultural traits," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 300-323.
    19. Hallman, Alice & Spiro, Daniel, 2023. "A theory of hypocrisy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 401-410.
    20. Hanaki, Nobuyuki & Tanimura, Emily & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2019. "The Principle of Minimum Differentiation revisited: Return of the median voter," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 145-170.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Final Five Voting; Political system; Partisan gridlock; Election reform; Political innovation; Political parties; Healthy competition; Party primary; Instant Runoff Voting; Plurality Voting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:34:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10602-022-09386-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.