The Cambridge series on the Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions is built around attempts to answer two central questions: How do institutions evolve in response to individual incentives, strategies, and choices, and how do institutions affect the performance of political and economic systems? The scope of the series is comparative and historical rather than international or specifically American, and the focus is positive rather than normative.

Gary Cox has written a superb, wide-ranging theoretical analysis of the consequences of electoral systems for the way governments are chosen by the mass of citizens. Rooted firmly in the “transaction benefits” theory of political institutions, which holds that a role of institutions is to prevent some collective choices from arising, or otherwise limit the number of enforceable policy outcome, Cox shows how a range of electoral institutions affect the extent and ease with which voters can coordinate (or form electoral coalitions) to provide outcomes or opportunities for transacting that improve on their status quo, but would not happen in the absence of these electoral institutions. In the coalitional equilibria he describes, voters make their votes count by controlling the number of candidates. But the emphasis everywhere is on synthesis, generalization, and unification of theory. Results apply to coalitions whether they are explicitly negotiated by elites or voluntarily coordinated by electors via strategic voting and convergent expectations about the strength of candidates.