A comparative welfare analysis of electoral systems with endogenous turnout

I investigate the welfare properties of a broad class of electoral systems with endogenous turnout. I find that the welfare ranking of electoral systems depends on the composition of the electorate. If citizens have identical voting costs, then all electoral systems that satisfy certain regularity properties generate the same level of welfare. If voting costs are heterogeneous, and the two parties are (almost) equally popular, then majority rule (MR) generates the highest welfare among these systems. I also analyse a model with heterogeneous and group-specific costs. I show that, under certain conditions, proportional representation dominates MR.