Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: The Delegation Perspective on Representative Democracy
Author-Name: Roland Hain
Author-Name: Manipushpak Mitra
Author-Email: 
Classification-JEL: D72, D82, P16
Keywords: Constitutional Design, Representative Democracy, Parliament Size, Information Costs
Abstract: Why do political constituencies delegate decision power to representative assemblies? And how is the size of such assemblies determined? We analyze these 
	questions of constitutional design in a model with voters learning their preferred alternative only after engaging in costly information gathering. We show that there is an 
	optimal assembly size that would be chosen at a constitutional stage. This implies a relationship between assembly and constituency size. We then compared 
	this relationship to actual data. Fitting a single parameter to the data, we show that our model can explain the actual relationship between assembly and constituency 
	size quite well. 
Note: 
Length: 34
Creation-Date: 2002-07	
Revision-Date: 
File-URL: http://www.wiwi.uni-bonn.de/bgsepapers/bonedp/bgse17_2002.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:bon:bonedp:bgse17_2002