Authors: Adam Rohde, Xuan Huynh, Andrew Shapiro, and Brandon Thoma
Date: June 12, 2020
Description: The conclusions of Bordignon, Nannicini, and Tabellini (2016) with respect to the effects of runoff elections on political participation and policy volatility provide informative results that positively add to the discussion of the benefits of different electoral systems on societal political behavior and economic stability. The sensitivity of the authors’ results survive the most common robustness challenges under a Regression Discontinuity Design, yet unobserved confounding ultimately remains possible but unable to be fully explored due to lack of Italian-specific knowledge. Additional studies are ultimately necessary to validate the results for a more recent Italian electorate, and to study the ability to generalize such results to countries outside of Italy.