Are incumbents disproportionately advantaged at the polls relative to non-incumbents in Africa’s emerging democracies? The prevailing wisdom characterizes African politics as predominantly ‘neopatrimonial’ and ‘semi-authoritarian’, whereby incumbents systematically manipulate the...

This paper studies the choice of electoral rules, in particular, the question of minority representation. Majorities tend to disenfranchise minorities through strategic manipulation of electoral rules. With the aim of explaining changes in electoral rules adopted by US cities (particularly in...

Can electoral responsiveness hurt voters? In contrast to the existing literature on voter support for policies with immediate positive outcomes, we theorize conditions under which politicians’ pursuit of voters’ preferred policy can also have immediate adverse consequences for voter welfare....

Duverger (1954) noted that changes in electoral systems will have two types of effects: mechanical effects, and reactions of political agents in anticipation of these, which he referred to as psychological effects. It is complicated to empirically separate the two effects since these occur...

We exploit a discontinuity in Brazilian municipal election rules to investigate whether political competition has a causal impact on policy choices. In municipalities with less than 200,000 voters mayors are elected with a plurality of the vote. In municipalities with more than 200,000 voters a...