Electoral institutions shape legislators’ incentive for personal vote-seeking, and thereby policy outcomes (Carey and Shugart, 1995). Trade liberalization (Nielson, 2003; Hankla, 2006; Crisp et al., 2010), subsidy spending (Rickard, 2012), and, government spending (Edwards and Thames, 2007; Persson and Tabellini, 2003) have been related to the conditions that legislators compete under for re-election. Personal vote-seeking on the part of legislators, that is, results in increased spending, and in particular in increased spending on local public goods. These findings have been challenged both because (1) there is a gap between the formal properties of the electoral institutions, the incentives they generate on the part of legislators, and public policy (Shugart, 2008); and because (2) differences in coding electoral rules easily mask inconsistencies in the findings across different policies and outcomes. Using different classifications of electoral institutions (e.g. Carey and Shugart, 1995; Hallerberg and Marier, 2004; Nielson, 2003; Wallack et al., 2003), the paper replicates the Edwards and Thames (2007) study based on the World Bank’s World Development Indicators of government expenditure in 77 countries between 1970 and 2000. Not only does it demonstrate that coding decisions have important implications for the effect that electoral rules have on personal vote-seeking; but more importantly through discussion of different classifications of electoral rules and their consequences it provides valuable clues as to the causal mechanisms at work. In this respect the paper concentrates on narrowing the gap between the formal properties of electoral rules and the incentives they generate, and thereby contribute to our understanding of electoral rules and their consequences.
