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.
