IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jgu/wpaper/2411.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Electoral Methods and Political Polarization

Author

Listed:
  • Salvatore Barbaro

    (Johannes-Gutenberg University, Germany)

Abstract

Research from various disciplines has addressed the relationships between electoral systems and political polarization. The results are inconclusive. This paper systematically examines how different electoral systems either promote political polarization or render it unattractive for candidates to distinguish themselves through polarization. We assume a polarized electorate and investigate Condorcet-consistent voting procedures as well as scoring rules, both single and two-staged.

Suggested Citation

  • Salvatore Barbaro, 2024. "Electoral Methods and Political Polarization," Working Papers 2411, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    • Handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2411
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2411.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2024
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Ðura-Georg Granić, 2012. "Two field experiments on Approval Voting in Germany," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(1), pages 171-205, June.
    2. Sean Horan & Martin J. Osborne & M. Remzi Sanver, 2019. "Positively Responsive Collective Choice Rules And Majority Rule: A Generalization Of May'S Theorem To Many Alternatives," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1489-1504, November.
    3. Myerson, Roger B. & Weber, Robert J., 1993. "A Theory of Voting Equilibria," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 102-114, March.
    4. Grofman, Bernard & Feld, Scott L. & Fraenkel, Jon, 2017. "Finding the Threshold of Exclusion for all single seat and multi-seat scoring rules: Illustrated by results for the Borda and Dowdall rules," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 52-56.
    5. Jean-François Laslier & Karine Straeten, 2008. "A live experiment on approval voting," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(1), pages 97-105, March.
    6. Antoinette Baujard & Frédéric Gavrel & Herrade Igersheim & Jean-François Laslier & Isabelle Lebon, 2013. "Who’s Favored by Evaluative Voting ? An Experiment Conducted During the 2012 French Presidential Election," Working Papers of BETA 2013-08, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    7. Gehrlein, William V. & Lepelley, Dominique & Moyouwou, Issofa, 2016. "A note on Approval Voting and electing the Condorcet loser," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 115-122.
    8. Steven J. Brams & Peter C. Fishburn, 2010. "Going from Theory to Practice: The Mixed Success of Approval Voting," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Jean-François Laslier & M. Remzi Sanver (ed.), Handbook on Approval Voting, chapter 0, pages 19-37, Springer.
    9. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 2020. "Strategy-Proofness, Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, and Majority Rule," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 459-474, December.
    10. Diss, Mostapha & Dougherty, Keith & Heckelman, Jac C., 2023. "When ties are possible: Weak Condorcet winners and Arrovian rationality," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 128-136.
    11. Kurihara, Takashi, 2018. "A simple characterization of the anti-plurality rule," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 110-111.
    12. Eric Kamwa, 2022. "Scoring rules, ballot truncation, and the truncation paradox," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 192(1), pages 79-97, July.
    13. Walter Bossert & Kotaro Suzumura, 2017. "The greatest unhappiness of the least number," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(3), pages 637-655, December.
    14. Massimo Bordignon & Tommaso Nannicini & Guido Tabellini, 2016. "Moderating Political Extremism: Single Round versus Runoff Elections under Plurality Rule," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(8), pages 2349-2370, August.
    15. Ilia Tsetlin & Michel Regenwetter & Bernard Grofman, 2003. "The impartial culture maximizes the probability of majority cycles," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 21(3), pages 387-398, December.
    16. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 2008. "On The Robustness of Majority Rule," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(5), pages 949-973, September.
    17. Dan Felsenthal & Nicolaus Tideman, 2014. "Weak Condorcet winner(s) revisited," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 313-326, September.
    18. Lepelley, Dominique & Valognes, Fabrice, 2003. "Voting Rules, Manipulability and Social Homogeneity," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(1-2), pages 165-184, July.
    19. Saari, Donald G., 1999. "Explaining All Three-Alternative Voting Outcomes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 313-355, August.
    20. Sen, Amartya, 1993. "Internal Consistency of Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 495-521, May.
    21. Amartya Sen, 2020. "Majority decision and Condorcet winners," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 211-217, March.
    22. Amartya Sen, 1995. "How to Judge Voting Schemes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 91-98, Winter.
    23. William Gehrlein, 2005. "Probabilities of election outcomes with two parameters: The relative impact of unifying and polarizing candidates," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 9(4), pages 317-336, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Salvatore Barbaro & Nils D. Steiner, 2022. "Majority principle and indeterminacy in German elections," Working Papers 2202, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    2. Granić, Đura-Georg, 2017. "The problem of the divided majority: Preference aggregation under uncertainty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 21-38.
    3. Matías Núñez, 2014. "The strategic sincerity of Approval voting," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(1), pages 157-189, May.
    4. Salvatore Barbaro, 2021. "A social-choice perspective on authoritarianism and political polarization," Working Papers 2108, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    5. Costel Andonie & Daniel Diermeier, 2022. "Electoral Institutions with impressionable voters," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(3), pages 683-733, October.
    6. Salvatore Barbaro & Anna Specht, 2021. "Simple-majority rule and the size of the Bundestag," Working Papers 2105, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    7. Alós-Ferrer, Carlos & Buckenmaier, Johannes, 2019. "Strongly sincere best responses under approval voting and arbitrary preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 388-401.
    8. Jean-François Laslier, 2009. "The Leader Rule," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 21(1), pages 113-136, January.
    9. Andreas Darmann & Julia Grundner & Christian Klamler, 2017. "Election outcomes under different ways to announce preferences: an analysis of the 2015 parliament election in the Austrian federal state of Styria," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 201-216, October.
    10. Anna-Sophie Kurella & Salvatore Barbaro, 2024. "On the Polarization Premium for radical parties in PR electoral systems," Working Papers 2410, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    11. Darmann, Andreas & Grundner, Julia & Klamler, Christian, 2019. "Evaluative voting or classical voting rules: Does it make a difference? Empirical evidence for consensus among voting rules," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 345-353.
    12. Wesley H. Holliday & Eric Pacuit, 2023. "Split Cycle: a new Condorcet-consistent voting method independent of clones and immune to spoilers," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 197(1), pages 1-62, October.
    13. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Johannes Buckenmaier, 2018. "Strictly sincere best responses under approval voting and arbitrary preferences," ECON - Working Papers 302, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    14. Enriqueta Aragones & Micael Castanheira, 2010. "approval voting," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    15. Tanya Gibbs & Henry W. Chappell, Jr., 2021. "Elections with Multiple Positive and Negative Votes," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 37-47, December.
    16. Bhattacharya, Mihir & Gravel, Nicolas, 2021. "Is the preference of the majority representative ?," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 87-94.
    17. Pintér, Ágnes & Veszteg, Róbert F., 2010. "Minority vs. majority: An experimental study of standardized bids," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 36-50, March.
    18. Aki Lehtinen, 2007. "The Borda rule is also intended for dishonest men," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 73-90, October.
    19. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira, 2012. "One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(1), pages 43-87, January.
    20. Aaron Hamlin & Whitney Hua, 2023. "The case for approval voting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 335-345, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Elections; Voting Schemes; Political Polarization; Scoring Rules;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:jgu:wpaper:2411. 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: Research Unit IPP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlmaide.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.