Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/198778 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 7418
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
The concept of electoral competition plays a central role in many subfields of political science, but no consensus exists on how to measure it. One key challenge is how to conceptualize and measure electoral competitiveness at the district level across alternative electoral systems. Recent efforts to meet this challenge have introduced general measures of competitiveness which rest on explicit calculations about how votes translate into seats, but also implicit assumptions about how effort maps into votes (and how costly effort is). We investigate how assumptions about the effort-to-votes mapping affect the units in which competitiveness is best measured, arguing in favor of vote-share denominated measures and against vote-share-per-seat measures. Whether elections under multimember proportional representation systems are judged more or less competitive than single-member plurality or runoff elections depends directly on the units in which competitiveness is assessed (and hence on assumptions about how effort maps into votes).
Subjects: 
competitiveness
measurement
electoral systems
mobilization
turnout
JEL: 
D72
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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