Persson and Tabellini (2002) divide electoral rules and political regimes into two
types: majoritarian versus proportional electoral systems; and presidential versus
parliamentary regimes. They focus on the individual incentives of politicians as the
link between formal political institutions and political behaviour. They argue that in
single-member district electoral systems, politicians in a political party must focus
on maximizing the number of districts they win; this means focusing on policies
targeted to voters in a particular district, such as employees of a particular company
that might be given a government contract, or other types of ‘‘pork barrel’’ policies.
Lowi has referred to these policies as ‘‘distributive’’ (1964, 1972). Under proportional
representation, by contrast, politicians need to maximize votes and not districts; for
this purpose, redistributive policies that appeal to broad strata of voters, such as
national health insurance or public pension plans, are better.