Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Vote Choice and Representation in Challenging Electoral Environments

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Hundreds of millions of voters around the world select representatives in systems which allow them to choose from dozens or hundreds of candidates and dozens of political parties. Work in political science, psychology, and consumer choice highlights the pernicious effects of large choice sets on our ability to make satisfactory choices. This study seeks to expetnd the findings to the electoral arena and develop and test a new theory about the trade-off between representation and the ability of voters to select representatives. Scholars and designers of electoral systems often seek to improve the representativeness of the pool of candidates by increasing the number of seats in each district, lowering barriers to entry, and creating institutions that encourage personalistic campaigns. However, if these institutions succeed at increasing the number of options with which voters are presented, they may also have perverse effects on the ability of voters to make satisfactory choices, the quality of representation and accountability, and democratic stability. Excessively large choice sets may prevent voters from making satisfactory choices, decrease their feelings of political efficacy, and lead them to become dissatisfied with democratic institutions. These problems can be compounded in systems where political parties, an important source of information, are weak and less effective signals of candidate quality.This project will test for a relationship between the size of voters' choice sets and their ability and willingness to make satisfactory choices, their satisfaction with their choices, and their support for democracy. It will also test for the ability of political parties to mitigate some of the effects of large choice sets, even in democratic systems with weaker political parties and personalistic campaigns.This theroey about vote choice will be tested using a series of experiments conducted in two Brazilian cities: Sao Paulo and Recife. These experiments will improve on existent work on correct voting by expeanding it beyond U.S. elections and testing for a causal relationship between electoral institutions and the ability of voters to make satisfactory choices.Better understanding the relationship between the choices with which voters are presented in elections and the ability of voters to make satisfactory choices can have profound implications for the quality of representation and the stability of new democracies. Electoral institutions, political campaigns, and media coverage of elections may need to be better designed to provide voters with a more manageable choice set. Furthermore, the results from this project will shed more light on the value of investing in strengthening political parties as a means of improving representation and voters' poltiical efficacy.