Elections and Electoral Rules

A central question to the health of any democratic system is the manner in which public preferences are meaningfully expressed through electoral mechanisms. Understanding the relationship between voters and the officials elected to represent them is vital to any assessment of representative democracy. This component of CSDI’s research agenda engages the role and impact of various electoral rules and systems in aggregating and expressing public preferences, which are ultimately translated into legislative and executive institutions.   Questions relating to the impact of various electoral institutions on the representation of citizens and the production of policy are of particular interest.