Public goods equilibria under closed- and open-list proportional representation
| Author | Daniel M Kselman |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0951629819895808 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2020, Vol.32(1) 112–142
ÓThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0951629819895808
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Public goods equilibria under
closed- and open-list
proportional representation
Daniel M Kselman
IE School of Global and Public Affairs,IE University – Campus Madrid, Spain
Abstract
Building on past research, this paper develops a game theoretic model to study the provision of
local public goods under closed- and open-list proportional representation (CLPR and OLPR). The
core results suggest that, all thing equal, legislators will provide voters with higher levels of public
goods in OLPR than in CLPR systems. However, two intervening variables condition the institu-
tional comparison: the district magnitude and electoral volatility. Firstly, public goods effort increases
as district magnitude increasesin OLPR systems, while it tends to decrease as magnitude increases
in CLPR systems. Indeed, when district magnitude is 2, the two systems are often indistinguish-
able. Furthermore, the distinction between OLPR and CLPR weakens when electoral volatility is
low, such that neither system generateshigh levels of public goods effort. In addition to their rele-
vance for political economy, the paper’s results provide game theoretic foundations for a series of
theoretical conjectures found inCarey and Shugart’s (1995) seminal study of electoral institutions
and legislative personalism (Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: A rank-ordering of electoral
formulas. Electoral Studies 1995;14(4): 417–439).
Keywords
Closed-list proportional representation, district magnitude;open-list proportional representation;
public goods
Corresponding author:
Daniel M Kselman, IE School of Global andPublic Affairs, IE University – Campus Madrid, Calle Maria de
Molina 6 Madrid, Madrid 28006, Spain.
Email: dkselman@faculty.ie.edu
1. Introduction
In a seminal article, Carey and Shugart (1995) argue that open-list proportional rep-
resentation (OLPR), where voters cast individual preference votes rather than party
list votes, should generate more personalistic legislative effort than traditional
closed-list proportional-representation (CLPR) systems. They also argue that dis-
trict magnitude should have an interactive impact on candidates’ incentives to culti-
vate a personal vote. In CLPR systems, as districts get larger, individual candidates
should invest less and less in cultivating a personal reputation. In OLPR systems,
the opposite should be true: as district magnitude increases, the competition for
preference votes should intensify, as should the pressure to distinguish oneself from
co-partisans.
Since the publication of this article, a variety of empirical papers have provided
support for this interactive relationship. Crisp et al. (2004) demonstrate that legis-
lators in OLPR systems become more likely to engage in personalistic behaviors
(e.g. generating ‘targeted’ legislative bills) in large electoral districts. Shugart et al.
(2005) demonstrate that personal vote seeking characteristics, such as being born
in a district, become more common in larger OLPR electoral districts. Andre
´et al.
(2015a) find that, in OLPR systems, the time legislators spend in their districts
increases with district magnitude. In a study of pre-1993 Italy (which used OLPR),
Chang and Golden (2007) find that corruption increases with district magnitude in
OLPR systems, owing to the high financial costs of personalistic campaigns.
These papers all suggest that personalistic incentives increase with magnitude in
OLPR systems, as predicted by Carey and Shugart (1995). However, the empirical
content that they attach to legislative personalism varies, and exposes a tension in
the way political scientists and political economists evaluate the ‘welfare’ conse-
quences of legislative personalism. In some cases, it is associated with fairly ‘posi-
tive’ forms of legislative accountability (e.g. having local origins and spending time
in the district), while in others it is associated with ‘negative’ accountability, in the
form of political corruption or legislative parochialism.
Building on this research, we develop a game theoretic model to study the provi-
sion of local public goods by incumbent legislators under CLPR and OLPR. Section
3 exposes a fundamental collective action problem in CLPR systems: incumbents
placed high on a party’s list will free-ride on the publicgoods efforts of co-partisans
with lower list positions, leading to marginal candidate equilibria in which at most 1
of a party’s Nincumbents devotes effort to public goods. Section 4 then develops a
model of OLPR in which voters first determine which party they will support, and
then cast a preference vote for the member of said party’s list who exerts the highest
level of public goods effort. In the OLPR model, mutually assured re-election equili-
bria emerge, in which all of a party’s Nincumbents devote positive effort to public
goods, and split evenly the cost of (just barely . . .) re-electing the entire district
delegation.
These core results suggest that, all things equal, legislators will provide voters
with more public goods in OLPR than in CLPR systems.However, two intervening
variables condition the institutional comparison (Section 5). Firstly, public goods
Kselman 113
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