Studying Electoral Institutions and their Consequences: Electoral Systems and Electoral Laws (original) (raw)

It is a staple assumption of current political science that rules and institutions matter. Although, which rules and institutions matter, and to what/whom they are supposed to matter, are often more muddled topics. Such a lack of clarity is not the case for the study of electoral systems, however. From Duverger's 'tendencies' onwards, it has been quite clear which institutions matter to what: the counting rules for votes matter to the outcome of the election. And a great deal of work has been devoted to showing how different players are advantaged or disadvantaged by various counting rules. This was done relatively informally by early electoral reformers such as Enid Lakeman (1974) and more formally by Rae (1967).