https://t.co/ObD1XmNqdx

The new issue of the Q is now out ( https://t.co/6Vix67dMiG). We have great papers from @shirokuriwaki, @YusakuHoriuchi, DM Smith; A Cohen; @austinlwright, @lukencondra, JN Shapiro, @AndrewCShaver; A Yan. We will tweet about each paper in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

We are also pleased to welcome Alex Fourniaies to our editorial board! Alex will bring his methodological and comparative expertise to our editorial team. Welcome Alex!

A few changes to the QJPS editorial board. After many years, Scott Gehlbach and @ahall_research have left our editorial team. We thank them profusely for their service to the Q and to the profession. Thank you!

We cannot do full justice here to this paper, which contains many important results. So please check it out on our website:

There may be many reasons to support RCV, but the transformation of politics it is supposed to bring is not one. The structural forces shaping politics today are unlikely to be tamed by institutional reforms, at least of the sort of RCV.

Coefficients across all regressions are not statistically significant. Even taking into account confidence intervals, in the best case scenario, changes would be far from transformative.

Using multiple strategies and across multiple outcomes (fiscal policy, ideology, roll call voting in municipal councils, political representation), @avishwanath28 documents a very limited effect of RCV.

But is that so? @avishwanath28 tests the effect of RCV taking advantages of the adoption of this electoral method in multiple US cities.

RCV is believed to have multiple advantages. As candidates need a majority to win, they would be forced to moderate. The legislature would be more representative of the median voters and policy outcomes would reflect this. RCV would transform politics, its proponents believe.

Not surprisingly in these circumstances, several scholars and pundits have called for a reform of democratic institutions. One popular reform is ranked choice voting (RCV). RCV enables voters to cast a preference ballot rather than voting for a single candidate.

In the US, but also in Europe, many argue that democratic politics is broken. Polarization is on the rise, comprimise is in decline, and extremes keep gaining votes.

From the lastest issue of the QJPS, "The Effects of Ranked Choice Voting on Substantive Representation" by @avishwanath28. A thread.

For more details, check out the article: https://t.co/QkDV2wk1Ur.

Question for the author and others: How do you square the findings across these different studies?

Interestingly, some of the author’s other studies suggest that seemingly important factors such as the tenure or party of the official have no detectable effect on performance. This would seem to make the finding on appointed vs. elected officials even more remarkable.

But some is also attributable to incentives. The author argues that appointed officials are better monitored, and he shows that the effect of appointed vs. elected is smaller in less populous jurisdictions, where voter information is likely greater.

Some of this effect seems to be attributable to selection. Appointed officials tend to be better educated than elected officials.

Appointed (vs elected) officials increase voter turnout by 1-2 percentage points and also increase voter registration.

In this study, Joshua Ferrer exploits changes in selection methods over time to estimate the effect of electing vs. appointing local officials. Specifically, he studies the local officials who administer elections. (Whoa, that’s meta.)