Making Public Infrastructure Work: Multi-seat Majoritarian Elections as a new Institutional Approach

The wealth of nations depends on the quality of their infrastructure. Often, however, infrastructure suffers from ineffective investments and poor maintenance. Proposed solutions, such as New Public Management or Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) tend to develop into Politicians-Private Partnerships as politicians collude with private firms to exploit present and future tax-payers. Therefore, it is necessary to give citizens better control over collective decision making. While there is a significant economic literature on empowering citizens via decentralization and direct democratic institutions, the role of electoral rules has thus far been rather neglected. An interesting case in point is Switzerland, which is well known for its high-quality infrastructure, extensive decentralization, and direct democracy. However, this paper argues that there is an additional and previously neglected institution that moves Swiss politicians away from client politics towards better serving public interest: Switzerland’s unique electoral institutions which effectively combine proportional elections with multi-seat majority elections. We explain how these institutions work, how they enhance the relationships between citizens and public and private entities, and we argue that they could be implemented in other countries.

Seeded word-of-mouth marketing strategy: mapping and analysis of a network of political supporters

Objective: To analyze how a structure-based seeding strategy can improve word-of-mouth marketing efficiency in proportional elections.Methodology: This study is quantitative and qualitative. In the quantitative phase, an egocentric social network analysis (SNA) of a candidate was conducted. Using Bonacich's degree, intermediation and power centralities, the study identified, then interviewed nine seed actors, which through the snowball technique, led to the identification of 31 other interviewees and the formation of a total network of 232 actors. In the qualitative phase, the reasons for supporting ego and alters as well as their preceding characteristics were analyzed using report content analysis.Originality / Relevance: This is a study of the characteristics of the actors along with their centrality in the strategy of seeding, spreading and maintaining the reputation of the political actor, especially candidates for proportional elections.Results: The characteristics of the most central supporters within the network reflect the bonds of trust built and deposited in the candidate, with ideology and friendship being the most prone to a more effective word-of-mouth marketing. The precedents for commitment and perceived value of word-of-mouth propensity were also verified.Theoretical / Methodological Contributions: This study includes the discussion of proportional elections in electoral marketing, highlighting the power of supporters through analysis of social network marketing. It also contributes to the analysis of the characteristics of actors in the effectiveness of seeding strategy in word-of-mouth marketing.Contributions to Management: The candidate may adopt a seeding strategy in his campaign, thereby promoting effectiveness in resource allocation, while allowing the supporter to understand the difference of his role as a supporter.

Gender, Incumbency and Party List Nominations

This study assesses how political parties’ candidate selection strategies influence women’s descriptive parliamentary representation. Focusing on proportional elections, it explores what determines whether parties place women in viable list positions. Evaluating party rankings at the individual level, it directly examines a mechanism – party nomination – central to prevailing explanations of empirical patterns in women’s representation. Moreover, it jointly evaluates how incumbency and gender affect nomination. This study uses European Parliament elections to compare a plethora of parties, operating under numerous institutions, in the context of a single legislature. It finds that gender differences in candidate selection are largely explained by incumbency bias, although party ideology and female labor force participation help explain which parties prioritize the placement of novice women.

Electoral System Design in New Democracies

Elections in the wake of dramatic transitions from authoritarian regimes to democracy may confront voters with choices that are unattractive or bewildering, or both. This chapter examines the conditions that produce tractable sets of party options for voters, presents cross-national data on the choice sets and competitiveness in elections after dramatic transitions, and examines how the electoral formula used in proportional elections can affect electoral outcomes. The chapter argues that, in transitional contexts characterized by high uncertainty, electoral rules that reward economies of moderate scale, such as the Hare quota formula, can encourage the development of attractive choice sets. As democracies and party systems develop, however, the case for electoral rules that confer representational bonuses on winning parties gains traction.

Electoral Rules and Trade Policy

This paper analyses the trade policies in the voting equilibria under different rules in a small open economy with a fixed factor of production. Specifically, we consider an economy in which economic rents exist in the long run due to a fixed supply of the factor of production. In this economy, each voter has its own share of the factor of production. We find that the equilibrium trade policy under proportional elections depends on the sum of the product of each group’s density and the group’s share of the product of factor, and is also affected by parameters under some conditions. However, under majoritarian elections, trade policy in equilibrium depends only on the middle group’s fraction of the specific factor if the middle-share group is dominant in one of the districts.