Arbeitspapier
Do Voters Choose Better Politicians than Political Parties? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Italy
This work analyses the effect of the two preference voting systems – proportional system with blocked lists of candidates vs proportional system with open list of candidates - on the quality of politicians. The exogenous variation in the Italian Parliament electoral system (Law n. 270/2005) - which marked the switch from an open to a closed list - allows us implement a Difference-inDifferences approach to compare the change in politicians' quality (as their education level) across the treatment group (the Parliamentarians) and the control group (the regional councillors) of politicians before and after the electoral reform is enforced. We find that the introduction of the reform lowered the politicians' ability. The result is common for Senators and Deputies and it is robust to the inclusion of control variables and to the restriction of treatment group to pastappointed Parliamentarians. This evidence suggests that voters are able to choose more qualifying politicians than political parties and it may be an argument in favor the re-introduction, in the electoral law, of preference voting schemes.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: Working Paper ; No. 024.2020
- Classification
-
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Election Law
Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions
- Subject
-
Ballot Structure
Preference Vote
Politicans’ Quality
Human Capital
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Alfano, Maria Rosaria
Baraldi, Anna Laura
Papagni, Erasmo
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
-
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM)
- (where)
-
Milano
- (when)
-
2020
- Handle
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Alfano, Maria Rosaria
- Baraldi, Anna Laura
- Papagni, Erasmo
- Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM)
Time of origin
- 2020
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