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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Sebasti\'an Morales; Charles Thraves |
| Abstract: | In an election campaign, candidates must decide how to optimally allocate their efforts/resources optimally among the regions of a country. As a result, the outcome of the election will depend on the players' strategies and the voters' preferences. In this work, we present a zero-sum game where two candidates decide how to invest a fixed resource in a set of regions, while considering their sizes and biases. We explore the Majority System (MS) as well as the Electoral College (EC) voting systems. We prove equilibrium existence and uniqueness under MS in a deterministic model; in addition, their closed form expressions are provided when fixing the subset of regions and relaxing the non-negative investing constraint. For the stochastic case, we use Monte Carlo simulations to compute the players' payoffs, together with its gradient and hessian. For the EC, given the lack of Equilibrium in pure strategies, we propose an iterative algorithm to find Equilibrium in mixed strategies in a subset of the simplex lattice. We illustrate numerical instances under both election systems, and contrast players' equilibrium strategies. Finally, we show that polarization induces candidates to focus on larger regions with negative biases under MS, whereas candidates concentrate on swing states under EC. |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2012.02856&r=all |
| By: | Ernesto Screpanti |
| Abstract: | In a representative democracy, members of parliament should be accountable to the voters who elected them. For this to be actually the case, the latter require an instrument of deterrence, a mechanism of control over opportunistic representatives, for example the right to recall them at any moment. However, two obstacles, one ideological and one practical, hinder legal recognition of this right. The first is due to the doctrine by which members of parliament legislate in the public interest, and therefore should not be constrained by a mandate binding them to their particular voters. The second consists in the fact that voting secrecy hinders the identification of which voters elected any one member of parliament. In this article, leveraging the potential offered by modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), I propose a model for an electoral system that dissolves the first problem and resolves the second. According to my model, electoral platforms constitute the formal instructions by which members of parliament are held accountable, and an electronic vote makes it possible to associate each member of parliament with his or her voters while still guaranteeing voting secrecy. Voters are then able to participate in a process of deliberation about the decisions made by their representative and may revoke their mandate if the representative fails to comply with it. |
| Keywords: | Election law, civil law, e-democracy, right of recall |
| JEL: | K15 K16 K38 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usi:wpaper:847&r=all |
| By: | Raouf Boucekkine (Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France and IRES, UCLouvain, Belgium.); Rodolphe Desbordes (SKEMA Business School-UCA); Paolo Melindi-Ghidi (xEconomix, UPL, Paris-Nanterre University, CNRS ; AMSE Aix-Marseille University, France and IRES, UCLouvain, Belgium.) |
| Abstract: | Elite-biased democracies are those democracies in which former political incumbents and their allies coordinate to impose part of the autocratic institutional rules in the new political regime. We document that this type of democratic transition is much more prevalent than the emergence of pure (popular) democracies in which the majority decides the new political rules. We then develop a theoretical model explaining how an elitebiased democracy may arise in an initially autocratic country. To this end, we extend the benchmark political transition model of Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) along two essential directions. First, population is split into majority versus minority groups under the initial autocratic regime. Second, the minority is an insider as it benefits from a more favourable redistribution by the autocrat. We derive conditions under which elite-biased democracies emerge and characterise them, in particular with respect to pure democracies. |
| Keywords: | elite-biased democracy, institutional change, minority/majority, economicfavouritism, Inequality, revolution. |
| JEL: | D72 C73 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2039&r=all |
| By: | Thomas Piketty (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Fabian Kosse (LMU - Institut für Informatik [München/Munich] - LMU - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the changing relationships between party support, electoral cleavages and socioeconomic inequality in Germany since 1949. We analyze the link between voting behaviors and socioeconomic characteristics of voters. In the 1950s-1970s, the vote for left parties was strongly associated with lower education and lower income voters. Since the 1980s voting for left parties has become associated with higher education voters. In effect, intellectual and economic elites seem to have drifted apart, with high-education elites voting for the left and high-income elites voting for the right. We analyze how this process is related to the occurrence of new parties since 1980 and the recent rise of populism. |
| Date: | 2020–11–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-03022265&r=all |
| By: | Francesco Campo; Sara Giunti; Mariapia Mendola |
| Abstract: | The ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has created a public opinion backlash. Italy has been on the frontline of this crisis but little is known about its political impact on voting behavior and electoral outcomes. We collect unique administrative data on the refugee relocation system across Italian municipalities during the crisis (2014-2017) to assess the causal effect of the inflow of asylum seekers on political support for radical-right anti-immigration parties and vote shares in parliamentary elections. We exploit exogenous variation in refugee settlement induced by the Italian Dispersal Policy, set up in 2014 as to exceptionally enlarge the national reception capacity. We find a positive and significant effect of the share of asylum seekers on right-wing-populist support. The effect is significantly heterogeneous across municipality characteristics, yet robust to dispersal policy features. We show that the anti–immigration backlash is not rooted in adverse economic effects, while it is triggered by radical–right propaganda. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Refugee Crisis, Political Preferences, Dispersal Policy |
| JEL: | H53 I38 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mib:wpaper:456&r=all |
| By: | Amory Gethin, (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Sultan Mehmood (Aix-Marseille School of Economics [Aix-Marseille Université] - Centre de la Vieille Charité [Aix-Marseille Université] - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Thomas Piketty (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This study documents the changing structure of Pakistan's political cleavages by making use of a unique set of exit polls covering every direct election held in the country between 1970 and 2018. We analyze the evolution of the party system, beginning with the initial economic "left-right" opposition between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Muslim Leage. Regionalist, ethnolinguistic and religious divides have weakened and transformed this party system. The decline of the PPP has come with its transformation from a lowincome mass-based party to an ethnic party confined to Sindhi speakers. We also analyze the recent rise of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the role played by the political unification of the various economic, religious and military elites in its success. Finally, we discuss how the Islamization policies implemented under the military regime of Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) have contributed to weaken the development of a pro-redistribution secularist coalition. |
| Date: | 2020–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-03022253&r=all |
| By: | Marcella Alsan; Katherine Eriksson; Gregory Niemesh |
| Abstract: | We study the contribution of economic conditions to the success of the first avowedly nativist political party in the United States. The Know-Nothing Party gained control of a number of state governments in the 1854-1856 elections running on a staunchly anti-Catholic and anti-Irish platform. Our analysis focuses on the case of Massachusetts, which had experienced a wave of Irish Famine immigration and was at the forefront of industrialization in the United States. Voters in towns with more exposure to Irish labor market crowdout and deskilling in manufacturing were more likely to vote for Know-Nothing candidates in state elections. These two forces played a decisive role in 1855, but not the other years of the Know Nothings’ success. We find evidence of reduced wealth accumulation for native workers most exposed to labor market crowdout and deskilling, though this was tempered by occupational upgrading. |
| JEL: | J01 J1 J15 J71 N12 N32 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28078&r=all |