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Laboratory elections with endogenous turnout: proportional representation versus majoritarian rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Melis Kartal
Melis Kartal*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Vienna, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 1090 Vienna, Austria
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

I investigate the impact of proportional representation (PR) and majoritarian rule (MR) on voter turnout and minority representation using theory and experiments. Numerous empirical studies have compared turnout across PR and MR. However, the empirical evidence is mixed. I show theoretically and experimentally that the comparison of turnout across PR and MR depends on the size of the minority but the empirical papers on the topic do not control for it. I also show that, in both theory and data, PR improves minority representation at a minute cost to efficiency if the size of the minority is sufficiently large. However, the representation of a small minority does not show a remarkable improvement under PR, unlike what the theory predicts. I conjecture that, under PR, there is a discouragement effect for the small minority because the PR system that I employ has an election threshold. As a result, the impact of the voting system on representation may be sensitive to both the size of the minority and the degree of proportionality.

Keywords

Majoritarian ruleProportional representationVoting experimentsTurnoutMinority representation

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior D72: Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 366 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-014-9408-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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