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Liberal political equality implies proportional representation

Social Choice and Welfare volume 33, Article number: 617 (2009) Cite this article

Abstract

This article shows that for a single-vote electoral system for a representative body to treat all voters and all parties equally, it must produce results essentially identical to list proportional representation (PR). Democratic theory has often been agnostic concerning representative institutions. Different institutions have been compared in terms of behavioral outcomes rather than axiomatic properties. Building on van der Hout (Annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, San Diego, 2002) result, we show that for an electoral system to completely respect the principle of liberal political equality and popular sovereignty, its results must be equivalent to those of list PR.

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universiteit van Tilburg, Room P 3224, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Eliora van der Hout

  2. Department of Government, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK

    Anthony J. McGann

  3. Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Anthony J. McGann

Authors
  1. Eliora van der Hout
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  2. Anthony J. McGann
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Correspondence to Anthony J. McGann.

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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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van der Hout, E., McGann, A.J. Liberal political equality implies proportional representation. Soc Choice Welf 33, 617 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-009-0382-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-009-0382-8

Keywords

  • Electoral System
  • Vote Rule
  • Allocation Rule
  • Vote Share
  • Proportional Representation