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Who Gets What, When, How – Through Which Electoral System?

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Abstract

When it comes to the impact of institutions such as electoral systems, parliamentary or presidential systems and executive–legislature relations, political science has predominately been preoccupied with their political effects, such as whether they lead to two-party or multi-party systems and whether stable governments result. What has been less discussed and researched are the policy implications of different electoral systems. Do they lead to more economic growth? Does Proportional Representation lead to higher budget deficits? Do majoritarian systems lead to more or less political violence? The shortage of research analysing these questions is surprising. This article critically outlines the research to date, summarises the main results and points to methodological problems in the literature before it outlines a framework for future research analysing how the choice of electoral system affects policy output. The main recommendation is that, before trying to connect policy outputs to broad labels such as ‘Proportional Representation’, which can cover significantly different systems, one should investigate the connection of policy outputs to intervening variables such as the effective number of parties and the mean duration of cabinets.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu and University of California, Irvine, 92697, CA, USA

    Rein Taagepera

  2. Department of Management and Security, Cranfield University, UK Defence Academy, SW8 9LA, Swindon

    Matt Qvortrup

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  1. Rein Taagepera
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  2. Matt Qvortrup
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Taagepera, R., Qvortrup, M. Who Gets What, When, How – Through Which Electoral System?. Eur Polit Sci 11, 244–258 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2011.35

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