Proportionality and Turnout: Competitiveness and the Contraction Effect of Electoral Reform∗
نویسندگان
چکیده
A substantial body of research examines whether increasing the proportionality of an electoral system increases turnout, mostly based on cross-national comparisons. In this paper, we offer two main contributions to the previous literature. First, we exploit a within-country panel dataset based on stable subnational geographic units before and after Norway’s historic 1921 electoral reform. Second, we tie our predictions about the effect of the Norwegian reform—from a two-round, single-member district system to a multi-member district system with proportional representation—to recent theoretical work on elite mobilization. This work predicts that a transition from single-member to multi-member districts need not increase turnout. Whether it does or not will depend on the competitiveness of the pre-reform districts. Using our novel data, we find significant support for the predictions of the elite mobilization models. ∗This work was initiated while Jon Fiva was visiting the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. Their hospitality is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank Anna Gomez, Anna Menzel, Anthony Ramicone, and Ross Friedman for data collection assistance, and Benny Geys for helpful comments. †Stanford University, E-mail: [email protected] ‡BI Norwegian Business School. E-mail: [email protected] §Harvard University, E-mail: [email protected] 1
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