One of the most important decisions in a democratic context concerns the way political elections are held. Internal to this issue, a growing debate is focusing on the effects of different electoral rules in terms of representation and political behavior. This project wants to contribute to the international debate by adopting an innovative perspective. In order to provide useful results for both academic and public sphere, this project wants to evaluate how different electoral systems affect election results in terms of vote distribution across parties, and candidates, and to investigate how electoral rules shape intra-party preference voting and distribution when the preference vote is allowed.
The most original and advanced contribution of the project regards the specific issue addressed and the methodology used. Experimental design allows us to control the variation in the dependent phenomenon -voting choice- according to different factors -institutional constrains and electoral rules- and to provide robust results that can be replied in other contexts. In addition, the evaluation of the direct effects of institutional settings increases the public knowledge on electoral engineering useful for policymakers, increasing the inner value of academic research for public purposes.
Participation in a democratic system is a key element for the legitimation of institutions, politicians and government. Understanding the functions and effects of different institutional settings is thus fundamental. The project contributes to the understanding of variations of electoral behavior among different rules that allow changing degree of voters¿ choice.
Most of the empirical evidence focuses on the role of the electoral systems in the distribution of votes across political parties. Considering the ongoing challenges related to political participation (such as personalization of political competition), this project follows the recent literature around the issue of how electoral rules affect both inter- and intra-party preference voting.
In particular, the between-party perspective contributes to the evaluation of electoral systems, while the within-party perspective allows us to add information to the public debate on the pros and cons of the OLPR aiming to define the outcomes of different ballot settings and how voters react to different stimuli.
In addition, the experimental design, through the implementation of an original web-based survey, guarantee control over factors and variables related to the voters¿ choice and the possibility to replicate the study in other contexts and situations, making this project an expandable product of knowledge.
Overall, the project aims to have a significant impact on the academic and public debate through its innovative methodological approach and the specific topic to which it is devoted, increasing our knowledge on electoral engineering issues.