Suchergebnisse

In this article we inquire into the strategic intent behind the design of election laws. Presuming that institutional designers are strategic and rational, we identify the extent of information incompleteness as determining their objectives for rule choice. For different levels of information incompleteness, we assess empirically the validity of explaining actual choices with designers' electoral goals. Using parameter-specific predictions for players' institutional preferences (obtained from a game-theoretic model which assumes electoral success as the design goal) we find that design does not always meet the criterion of elections-aimed rationality (electoral rationalizability). We identify a structural difference between levels of electoral rationalizability in two sets of European electoral reforms, those that accompanied the late 19th-early 20th-century franchise expansion, and those during the post-communist franchise creation in East-Central Europe. For the later sub-sample we rely on a qualitative assessment of electoral rationalizability since extremely high levels of information incompleteness in these cases do not allow us to apply the model reliably. We provide evidence linking the structural difference in electoral rationalizability between the two sub-samples and the sub-sample variation in electoral rationalizability in the late 19th-early 20th century to the quality of information available to the designers. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright 2008.]

Contests over public goods remain at the forefront of urban political battles in nearly every major city in the United States. The spatial location of the good can play an instrumental role in understanding the contours and outcomes of such conflicts. The authors explore a particular case—voting for a growth-related development project, the monorail, by referendum in the city of Seattle—and examine how a grassroots campaign successfully mobilized voters by targeting both their particularistic and collective interests. The authors conduct analysis at the precinct level and use spatial tools of analysis and ecological inference, finding that voter support for the monorail stemmed from the location of the proposed route and the campaign's progressive appeals to environmental, social justice, and high tech concerns. Although cost overruns ultimately derailed construction of the monorail in 2005, when passed in 2002, the monorail was the most expensive infrastructure project in Seattle's history.