Segnalazione bibliografica. American Political Science Review (2010), vol.104, n.4: 625-643 Autore: David Stasavage Abstract Scholars investigating European state development have long placed a heavy emphasis on the role played by representative institutions. The presence of an active representative assembly, it is argued, allowed citizens and rulers to contract over raising revenue and accessing credit. It may also have had implications for economic growth. These arguments have in turn been used to draw broad implications about the causal effect of analogous institutions in other places and during other time periods. But if assemblies had such clear efficiency benefits, why did they not become a universal phenomenon in Europe prior...

Segnalazione bibliografica. West European Politics (March 2011), Vol. 34, N. 2, pp. 256-281 Autore: Ruben Ruiz-Rufino Abstract This article proposes a new way to measure proportionality using aggregated threshold functions. Electoral systems can be summarised by a single value that shows the necessary share of the total vote to win either one seat or half of the seats in parliament. The article calculates aggregate threshold values for 142 different electoral systems that were used in 525 democratic elections between 1946 and 2000. These results are also contrasted with the most commonly used indices of proportionality and turn out to be both substantively and empirically richer....