Bundling is a concept used for studying the selection of candidates for public office. A voter typically chooses a candidate (or party) for the legislature, rather than directly voting for specific policies. When doing so, the voter is essentially selecting among bundles of policies that a candidate or a party will enact if in power.
Overview
Occurring principally in
republic
A republic () is a "sovereign state, state in which Power (social and political), power rests with the people or their Representative democracy, representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of gov ...
s, the electorate, rather than directly voting on each individual piece of proposed legislation, must choose a number of candidates (or parties) for the legislature. In so doing, they accept or reject each individual candidate or party and their "bundle" of positions on various issues. As there may be no candidate who perfectly reflects the views of an individual voter on all the issues of importance to him/her, each voter must prioritize what issues are most important and choose a candidate accordingly. Another form of bundling occurs in races where the candidate has a
running mate who is elected on the same ticket, as in U.S. presidential elections.
Bundling, as studied in
public choice theory
Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science".Gordon Tullock, The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 987
Year 987 ( CMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* February 7 – Bardas Phokas (the Younger) and Bardas Skleros, two membe ...
2008, "public choice," ''The New Palgrave Dictionar ...
is essentially a variant of
product bundling: each candidate and party is marketed as a product comprising a bundle of positions and attributes. In
party-list proportional representation
Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a subset of proportional representation electoral systems in which multiple candidates are elected (e.g., elections to parliament) through their position on an electoral list. They can also be u ...
(particularly
closed list variants), bundling may be especially pronounced, as voters select an entire slate of party candidates rather than choosing individual candidates, thus lacking the option of selecting one candidate of a party and not another. Robert Cooter's ''The Strategic Constitution'' notes that when voters' demand for a party is
inelastic, the party will tend to nominate candidates based more on loyalty than on popularity: "Thus, monopoly power of a party decreases the demand of its leaders for loyalty."
Bundling in political economy is not to be confused with
bundling of donations in campaign finance. It has been argued that bundling can often reduce the cost of political transactions. But it has also been argued that the bundling of policy packages necessitated by indivisibility weakens the signals provided even by well-informed voters.
See also
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Autonomism
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Corporative federalism
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Consociationalism
Consociationalism ( ) is a form of democratic power sharing. Political scientists define a consociational state as one which has major internal divisions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, but which remains stable due to consultation a ...
*
Multicameralism
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Pillarisation
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Voluntary association
References
{{reflist
Public choice theory