IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v15y2003i1p5-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comparative Theory of Electoral Incentives

Author

Listed:
  • Kathleen Bawn

    (UCLA, kbawn@polisci.ucla.edu)

  • Michael F. Thies

    (UCLA, thies@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu)

Abstract

We expand Denzau and Munger’s 1986 model of ‘How Unorganized Interests Get Represented’ to address cross-national differences in electoral systems. We look at how individual legislators allocate their efforts to serving unorganized constituents versus organized groups. Our model shows how the optimal allocation of effort is affected by differences in nominating processes and electoral rules. Our findings include the following: (1) Closed-list proportional representation (PR) makes legislators generally more responsive to interest groups and less responsive to unorganized voters than single-member districts (SMD). (2) This difference becomes smaller as the personal component of the SMD vote diminishes. (3) Legislators elected via lists in a mixed system may be even less responsive to the unorganized than legislators in a pure list system.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathleen Bawn & Michael F. Thies, 2003. "A Comparative Theory of Electoral Incentives," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(1), pages 5-32, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:15:y:2003:i:1:p:5-32
    DOI: 10.1177/0951692803151001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692803151001
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951692803151001?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Denzau, Arthur T. & Munger, Michael C., 1986. "Legislators and Interest Groups: How Unorganized Interests Get Represented," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(1), pages 89-106, March.
    2. Hall, Richard L. & Wayman, Frank W., 1990. "Buying Time: Moneyed Interests and the Mobilization of Bias in Congressional Committees," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(3), pages 797-820, September.
    3. Schwartz, Thomas, 1994. "Representation as Agency and the Pork Barrel Paradox," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 78(1), pages 3-21, January.
    4. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    5. Weingast, Barry R & Shepsle, Kenneth A & Johnsen, Christopher, 1981. "The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 642-664, August.
    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. Jin-Hyuk Kim, 2008. "A welfare simulation of mixed-member electoral systems," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 447-456, September.

    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. Bellemare, Marc F. & Carnes, Nicholas, 2015. "Why do members of congress support agricultural protection?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 20-34.
    3. Keohane, Nathaniel O. & Revesz, Richard L. & Stavins, Robert N., 1997. "The Positive Political Economy of Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy," Discussion Papers 10759, Resources for the Future.
    4. Rausser, Gordon C. & de Gorter, Harry, 1988. "Endogenizing Policy In Models Of Agricultural Markets," 1988 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Knoxville, Tennessee 270460, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    5. Randall G. Holcombe & Jeffrey A. Mills, 1994. "Is Revenue-Neutral Tax Reform Revenue Neutral?," Public Finance Review, , vol. 22(1), pages 65-85, January.
    6. Mattozzi, Andrea & Snowberg, Erik, 2018. "The right type of legislator: A theory of taxation and representation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 54-65.
    7. Mickael Melki & Andrew Pickering, 2014. "Polarization and Government Debt," Discussion Papers 14/10, Department of Economics, University of York.
    8. Christian Bjørnskov & Axel Dreher & Justina Fischer, 2008. "Cross-country determinants of life satisfaction: exploring different determinants across groups in society," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(1), pages 119-173, January.
    9. Kroszner, Randall S. & Stratmann, Thomas, 1999. "Does Political Ambiguity Pay? Corporate Campaign contributions and the Rewards to Legislator Reputation," Working Papers 155, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    10. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Lopes da Fonseca, Mariana, 2021. "Appointed public officials and local favoritism: Evidence from the German states," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    11. Bruno Amable & Donatella Gatti & Elvire Guillaud, 2008. "How does Party Fractionalization convey Preferences for Redistribution in Parliamentary Democracies?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00348878, HAL.
    12. Carozzi, Felipe & Repetto, Luca, 2016. "Sending the pork home: Birth town bias in transfers to Italian municipalities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 42-52.
    13. Frank, Marco & Stadelmann, David, 2021. "More federal legislators lead to more resources for their constituencies: Evidence from exogenous differences in seat allocations," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 230-243.
    14. Brian C. Albrecht & Joshua R. Hendrickson & Alexander William Salter, 2022. "Evolution, uncertainty, and the asymptotic efficiency of policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 169-188, July.
    15. Stratmann, Thomas, 1996. "How Reelection Constituencies Matter: Evidence from Political Action Committees' Contributions and Congressional Voting," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 603-635, October.
    16. P. Hägg, 1997. "Theories on the Economics of Regulation: A Survey of the Literature from a European Perspective," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 337-370, December.
    17. Benedict S. Jimenez, 2015. "The Fiscal Performance of Overlapping Local Governments," Public Finance Review, , vol. 43(5), pages 606-635, September.
    18. Thomas A. Garrett & Russell M. Rhine, 2006. "On the size and growth of government," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(Jan), pages 13-30.
    19. Wolton, Stephane, 2016. "Lobbying, Inside and Out: How Special Interest Groups Influence Policy Choices," MPRA Paper 68637, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. José Cruz, 2001. "An empirical application of the median voter model and of the interest group influence model to the Portuguese and Galician municipalities," ERSA conference papers ersa01p25, European Regional Science Association.

    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:sae:jothpo:v:15:y:2003:i:1:p:5-32. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.