Parties, Preference Aggregation, and Policy: An Institutional Perspective on Redistribution

This paper examines the relationship between electoral rules and the chain of delegation from voters to political decision makers. I argue that whether whether electoral rules push voters to focus primarily on individual candidates or to cast their votes for parties rather than individuals not only structures voter-candidate relations, but also relationships between successful candidates and party leaders and, crucially, party positions with respect to redistributive policy. Candidate-centered rules motivate candidates to target the benefits of policy to their own constituents; party leaders who want their parties to do well in elections and who want to retain the good will of their rank and file will endeavor to direct the party's efforts toward helping elect individual candidates. Party-centered electoral rules provide no such incentive, but rather make it more attractive to design policy to benefit larger constituencies more broadly. Consequently, parties on the right and left (but particularly on the right) should have more redistribution-heavy platforms in party-centered systems than in candidate-centered ones. I test the implications of my argument using party-position data from the Comparative Manifesto Project.