Preferences for Electoral Systems

Abstract

Despite being a fundamental institutional factor of every democracy, we know very little about the public preferences for certain types of electoral systems. While some interest groups rally for more personalized electoral systems, there are almost no studies that have analyzed the public preferences for specific electoral systems in more detail. This question is particularly important as electoral systems usually involve trade-offs. For example, the more proportional an electoral system is, the less likely it is to produce clear majorities. When an electoral system is judged as unfair of ineffective by the public, this may have drastic consequences for citizens’ faith in democracy as a whole. This panel provides different perspectives on how electoral systems can be evaluated.