IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fea/wpaper/09_10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Two-ballot versus plurality rule: an empirical investigation on the number of candidates

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Gonçalves
  • Ricardo Madeira
  • Mauro Rodrigues

Abstract

Duverger claimed more than 50 years ago that the number of candidates in elections should be a function of electoral rules. Both his ?law?and ?hypothesis?suggest the number of candidates vying for seats in elections to be tightly linked to characteristics of the elec- toral process such as its degree of proportionality and the presence of runo¤s. Here we test the validity of Duverger?s claim using data from municipal elections in Brazil. Our study di¤ers from others in the ?eld in two important dimensions. First, by using municipal data we avoid the usual problems that plague statistical analysis using cross-country data. Sec- ondly, we have a truly exogenous source of variation due to a change in electoral legislation introduced by the constitutional reform of 1988: simple plurality remained the rule only in municipalities with less than 200,000 voters, and a second-ballot became mandatory for the others above that threshold. This allows for a neat identi?cation strategy using panel data. Our main ?nding is that elections with runo¤s lure greater numbers of candidates in municipalities with su¢ ciently high levels of heterogeneity.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Gonçalves & Ricardo Madeira & Mauro Rodrigues, 2008. "Two-ballot versus plurality rule: an empirical investigation on the number of candidates," Working Papers 09_10, Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade de Ribeirão Preto.
    • Handle: RePEc:fea:wpaper:09_10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: ftp://cpq.fearp.usp.br:2300/textos_discussao/eco/wpe09_10.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2008
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Riker, William H., 1982. "The Two-party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 753-766, December.
    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. Torres, Javier & Díaz, Guillermo, 2019. "Effects of runoff voting rules on number of parties and candidates' political experience: Evidence from a law change in Peru," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 97-107.
    2. Shin, Euncheol, 2019. "A model of pre-electoral coalition formation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 463-485.
    3. Laurent Bouton, 2013. "A Theory of Strategic Voting in Runoff Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1248-1288, June.

    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. de Miguel-Arribas, A. & Morón-Vidal, J. & Floría, L.M. & Gracia-Lázaro, C. & Hernández, L. & Moreno, Y., 2024. "Contests in two fronts," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    2. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    3. Piolatto, Amedeo, 2011. "Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: Which is most representative of voters?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 311-327, June.
    4. Jean Forand & Vikram Maheshri, 2015. "A dynamic Duverger’s law," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 285-306, December.
    5. Francesco De Sinopoli & Leo Ferraris & Giovanna Iannantuoni, 2013. "Electing a parliament," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(3), pages 715-737, March.
    6. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira, 2012. "One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(1), pages 43-87, January.
    7. Carol Mershon, 2020. "Challenging the wisdom on preferential proportional representation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 32(1), pages 168-182, January.
    8. Baskaran, Thushyanthan & Lopes da Fonseca, Mariana, 2013. "Electoral thresholds and political outcomes: Quasi-experimental evidence from a reform in Germany," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 177, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    9. Van Der Straeten, Karine & Sauger, Nicolas & Laslier, Jean-François & Blais, André, 2010. "The Mechanical and Psychological Effects of Electoral Systems: An Appraisal with Experimental Data," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1021, CEPREMAP.
    10. Maria Gallego & Norman Schofield & Kevin McAlister & Jee Jeon, 2014. "The variable choice set logit model applied to the 2004 Canadian election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 427-463, March.
    11. Iain McLean, 2015. "The strange history of social choice, and the contribution of the Public Choice Society to its fifth revival," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 153-165, April.
    12. Bharatee Bhusana, Ferris, J Stephen Dash & Stanley L. Winer, 2018. "Measuring Electoral Competitiveness: With Application to the Indian States," CESifo Working Paper Series 7216, CESifo.
    13. Arnaud Dellis & Alexandre Gauthier-Belzile & Mandar Oak, 2017. "Policy Polarization and Strategic Candidacy in Elections under the Alternative-Vote Rule," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 173(4), pages 565-590, December.
    14. Matteo Gamalerio & Massimo Morelli & Margherita Negri, 2021. "The Political Economy of Open Borders: Theory and Evidence on the role of Electoral Rules," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 21157, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    15. Pellicer, Miquel & Wegner, Eva, 2013. "Electoral Rules and Clientelistic Parties: A Regression Discontinuity Approach," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(4), pages 339-371, October.
    16. Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2023. "Coordinated democracy," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 33-45.
    17. Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz, 2016. "Competing cleavages in sub-Saharan Africa? How economic distance affects ethnic bloc politics," WIDER Working Paper Series 104, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Piolatto, Amedeo, 2011. "Plurality versus proportional electoral rule: Which is most representative of voters?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 311-327, June.
    19. Norman Schofield, 2004. "Equilibrium in the Spatial ‘Valence’ Model of Politics," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 16(4), pages 447-481, October.
    20. Dan Usher, 2012. "Bargaining and voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 739-755, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Duverger's Law; Runoff; Heterogeneity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • 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:fea:wpaper:09_10. 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: Bruno Vizona Liberato The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Bruno Vizona Liberato to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fruspbr.html .

    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.