Strategic electoral rule choice under uncertainty
研究了以执政为目标的政党在选举结果不确定时如何选择选举规则，发现当主要政党获胜机会足够大时，它们会同意从比例代表制转向更多数决的规则以增加单独执政概率，且这种合谋需要高执政租金和足够的不确定性。
We study electoral rule choice in a multi-party model with office-motivated parties and electoral outcome uncertainty. We show that when all dominant parties (parties with positive probability of winning the election) have sufficiently good chances of winning, they agree to switch from the PR rule to a more majoritarian one in order to increase their chances of forming a single-party government. We identify the exact degree of disproportionality of the new rule and we prove that it is increasing in the expected vote share of the smaller parties (parties with zero probability of winning otherwise). The necessary and sufficient conditions for such collusion in favor of a majoritarian rule are: (a) the high rents from a single-party government and (b) sufficient uncertainty over the electoral outcome. Our theoretical predictions regarding the degree of the disproportionality of the electoral rule are supported by empirical evidence.