This thesis is a collection of three essays on voting as a means of collective decision- making. The first chapter builds a model of how voters should optimally behave in a legislative election with three parties under plurality rule. I show that, in contrast to single district elections, properties such as polarisation and misaligned voting can be mitigated in legislative elections. The second chapter studies a model of committee decision making where members have career concerns and a principal can choose the level of transparency (how much of the committees decision he can observe). We show that increased transparency leads to a breakdown in information aggregation, but that this may actually increase the principal's payoff. The theoretical model is then tested in a laboratory experiment. The final chapter introduces a model of legislative bargaining where three parties in the legislature bargain over the formation of government by choosing a policy and a distribution of government perks. I show that when individual politicians are responsible for the policies they implement - that is, those outside of government are not held accountable by voters for the implemented governments policies, while each individual politician in the ruling coalition is - then a given seat distribution can result in almost any two party coalition.

"This dissertation consists of three essays focusing on party competition in parliamentary democracies. In the first chapter, I provide an introduction to the topics covered in this dissertation. In the second chapter, I propose that parties manipulate issue salience to highlight not only issues on which they are perceived to be particularly competent, but also issues on which they are positioned far away from their main competitors. I use my theoretical proposition to explain the results of the 2005 election in Poland. In the third chapter, I offer a new approach to party competition by pointing out that parties with non-overlapping electorates are not intense competitors even if they are ideologically close to each other. I argue that parties perceive political entities that are popular among similar types of voters as their close competitors. In this analysis, I propose a measure of the degree to which the electorates of any two parties are overlapping. I show that the degree to which the electorates of parties are overlapping affects party behavior in the coalition formation process. In the fourth chapter of my dissertation, I analyze the competition in regional elections in Central Europe, focusing on how parties that are in the national level of government perform in regional elections, and to what extent their performance depends on voters' perceptions of national government performance. I show that the performance of national government parties in regional elections differs between countries and I offer explanations for these differences. In the last chapter of my dissertation, I discuss the implications of my findings"--Page vi.

This dissertation consists of three essays on fiscal federalism. The first essay takes a political economy approach to fiscal centralization, through federation formation. I analyze a simple two region model of federalism with interregional policy spillovers. Departing from a state of independence with decentralized provision of public policy we analyze the proposed formation of a federation to internalize the spillovers. A federation forms when the centralized outcomes satisfy participation constraints. With this restriction to rational federalism we then consider equilibrium allocations under alternative institutional environments involving; simple majority voting, restriction of uniform taxation, and regional bargaining through a bicameral legislature. The analysis illustrates the importance of these institutions on the allocation of policy authority in federations that form. The model produces clear results with regards to the feasible set of equilibrium centralization and the allocations of publicly provided goods therein. In the second essay local governments compete over a mobile business property tax base by adjusting their tax rates. This paper estimates the effect of neighboring tax rates on a local government's tax rate. This tax setting best response function is estimated with a difference-in-differences model. Endogeneity of neighboring tax rates is avoided by using election outcomes as an instrumental variable. The model is estimated using data from the municipalities of British Columbia, Canada. The findings indicate that tax competition is a determining factor of tax setting behavior. The results are discussed with reference to the local government institutions and the rising property values. The third essay studies intergovernmental transfers. Many intergovernmental transfers are said to serve political purposes. I augment a standard model of political career concerns allowing for multilevel governance, to investigate this assertion. When elections are staggered, an equilibrium exists with positive transfers. These transfers are motivated by two factors; sabotaging challengers and rent smoothing. These transfers are non-partisan and an artifact of the electoral dynamics as prescribed by an electoral calendar and politicians' career concerns. These results are discussed with reference to the growing literature on the partisan basis of intergovernmental transfers.

Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.