Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Series Editors' Preface
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION
- PART II STRATEGIC VOTING
- 3 On electoral systems
- 4 Strategic voting in single-member single-ballot systems
- 5 Strategic voting in multimember districts
- 6 Strategic voting in single-member dual-ballot systems
- 7 Some concluding comments on strategic voting
- PART III STRATEGIC ENTRY
- PART IV ELECTORAL COORDINATION AT THE SYSTEM LEVEL
- PART V COORDINATION FAILURES AND DEMOCRATIC PERFORMANCE
- PART VI CONCLUSION
- APPENDICES
- References
- Subject Index
- Author Index
4 - Strategic voting in single-member single-ballot systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Series Editors' Preface
- Preface
- PART I INTRODUCTION
- PART II STRATEGIC VOTING
- 3 On electoral systems
- 4 Strategic voting in single-member single-ballot systems
- 5 Strategic voting in multimember districts
- 6 Strategic voting in single-member dual-ballot systems
- 7 Some concluding comments on strategic voting
- PART III STRATEGIC ENTRY
- PART IV ELECTORAL COORDINATION AT THE SYSTEM LEVEL
- PART V COORDINATION FAILURES AND DEMOCRATIC PERFORMANCE
- PART VI CONCLUSION
- APPENDICES
- References
- Subject Index
- Author Index
Summary
“The evidence renders it undeniable that a large amount of sophisticated voting occurs – mostly to the disadvantage of the third parties nationally – so that the force of Duverger's psychological factor must be considerable.”
William H. Riker (1982:764).For as long as voting procedures have been used to decide important and controversial issues, there have been legislators and electors willing to vote strategically. Theoretical interest in strategic voting dates at least to Pliny the Younger (see Farquharson 1969) and probably earlier. In this chapter, I build on rather more recent and formal treatments of the strategy of voting: those framed in the decision-theoretic and game-theoretic traditions. Most of this work has appeared in the last thirty years and focuses on the behavior of legislators (e.g., Farquharson 1969; McKelvey and Niemi 1978; Miller 1980; Shepsle and Weingast 1984; Banks 1985; Austen-Smith 1987; Ordeshook and Schwartz 1987). This chapter focuses on the other, less well-trodden, branch of research into strategic voting, that dealing with the behavior of voters in mass elections.
There are of course many ways to conduct a mass election. This chapter deals in particular with elections in electoral districts that satisfy the following criteria: (1) There is one seat to be filled in the district; and (2) there is only one round of voting, after which the victor is decided. There are many electoral systems that satisfy these criteria: the Anglo-American first-past-the-post system; the Australian alternative vote system; the approval voting system; and so on.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Making Votes CountStrategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems, pp. 69 - 98Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997