Signature requirements are often used as hurdles to prevent overuse of direct democratic instruments such as citizen initiatives. We evaluate the causal effect of lowering signature requirements on the number of observed citizen initiative petitions. Based on municipal-level data for Germany, we...

We analyze the impact of elected competitors from the same constituency on legislative shirking in the German Bundestag from 1953 to 2017. The German electoral system ensures at least one federal legislator per constituency with a varying number of elected competitors between zero to four from...

We reply to the comment of John Carey and Simon Hix on our original contribution entitled “District Magnitude and Representation of the Majority’s Preferences: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Popular and Parliamentary Votes” in Public Choice 151:585–610 (<CitationRef CitationID="CR3">2012</CitationRef>). District magnitude does...</citationref>

Representatives have more effective incentives to cater to the preferences of the majority of citizens when they are elected in districts with few rather than many seats. We investigate this hypothesis empirically by matching Swiss members of parliament’s voting behavior on legislative...