Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0


Author-Name: Marcus Drometer
Author-X-Name-First: Marcus
Author-X-Name-Last: Drometer

Author-Name: Johannes Rincke
Author-X-Name-First: Johannes
Author-X-Name-Last: Rincke

Title: The design of political institutions: Electoral competition and the choice of ballot access restrictions in the United States
	
Abstract: Recent contributions to the political economics literature (Trebbi et al. 2007; Aghion et
al. 2004) have challenged the view that political institutions are exogenous to the behavior
of agents in the political arena. We explicitly address the potential endogeneity of institu-
tions by examining the link between the degree of political competition and the design of
ballot access restrictions in the United States. Exploiting exogenous variation in electoral
competition at the state level induced by the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, our main
finding is that restrictions to the entry of non-major party candidates have been systemat-
ically adjusted to changing degrees of electoral competition. As a consequence, differences
in ballot access requirements between states are endogenous in the sense that they reflect
differences in electoral competition.
Length:  34 pages
Creation-Date:  2008-06
File-URL: http://www.bgpe.de/texte/DP/057_drometer.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function: First version, 2008
Number: 057
Classification-JEL: D72, D78
Keywords: Political institutions, electoral competition, ballot access
Handle: RePEc:bav:wpaper:057_drometer