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Does a Double-Ballot Electoral System Make the Difference in Shaping Fiscal Policy Choices?

Info IEB Number 25, July 2016

Many electoral systems in the world, including that one recently approved in Italy for the election of the national parliament (the so-called Italicum), are based on the double-ballot mechanism.The expected gain of the double- ballot system compared to the single-ballot system is that the former should allow more stable governments implying less volatility of public policies.This column discusses the results of a recent research on the electoral system for Italian municipalities, showing that taxes and expenditure are lower under the double- ballot system than under the single-ballot case only if the number of lists supporting the major are not too many.