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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | François Durand (Nokia Bell Labs, LINCS - Laboratory of Information, Network and Communication Sciences - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - SU - Sorbonne Université); Antonin Macé (PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 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, PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Matias Nunez (CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - X - École polytechnique - ENSAE ParisTech - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | We study how voting rules shape voter coordination in large three-candidate elections. We consider three rules, varying according to the number of candidates that voters can support in their ballot: Plurality (one), Anti-Plurality (two) and Approval Voting (one or two). We show that the Condorcet winner—a normatively desirable candidate—can always be elected at equilibrium under Approval Voting. We then numerically study a dynamic process of political tâtonnement. Monte-Carlo simulations of the process deliver rich insights on election outcomes. The Condorcet winner is virtually always elected under Approval Voting, but not under the other rules. The dominance of Approval Voting is robust to alternative welfare criteria and to the introduction of expressive voters. |
| Keywords: | Approval voting,Poisson games,Strategic voting,Condorcet consistency,Fictitious play,Expressive voting |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-03162184&r=all |
| By: | Gene M Grossman (Princeton University); Elhanan Helpman (Harvard University and CIFAR) |
| Abstract: | Misinformation pervades political competition. We introduce opportunities for political candidates and their media supporters to spread fake news about the policy environment and perhaps about parties' positions into a familiar model of electoral competition. In the baseline model with full information, the parties' positions converge to those that maximize aggregate welfare. When parties can broadcast fake news to audiences that disproportionately include their partisans, policy divergence and suboptimal outcomes can result. We study a sequence of models that impose progressively tighter constraints on false reporting and characterize situations that lead to divergence and a polarized electorate. |
| Keywords: | policy formation, probabilistic voting, misinformation, polarization, fake news |
| JEL: | D78 D72 |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:269&r=all |
| By: | Zimmermann, Severin (University of Basel); Stutzer, Alois (University of Basel) |
| Abstract: | Asylum migration is a major societal challenge in the Western world affecting residents' policy preferences. We analyze the effects of newly hosting asylum seekers in a given municipality on local citizens' preferences in terms of migratory and redistributive policies as well as of support or opposition to political change in general. Policy preferences are measured based on citizens' actual voting behavior in national referendums in Switzerland between 1987 and 2017. We exploit the administrative placement of asylum seekers across municipalities and find that citizens vote temporarily slightly more restrictively on immigration issues in national referendums and are less supportive of redistribution than before hosting asylum seekers. Citizens are not more likely to vote for the status quo and not more likely to participate per se. |
| Keywords: | asylum seekers, direct democracy, political preferences, pro-immigration attitudes, redistribution, status quo effect, voter participation |
| JEL: | F22 H53 I38 J15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14159&r=all |
| By: | Lyytikainen, Teemu; Tukiainen, Janne |
| Abstract: | We test whether a voter’s decision to cast a vote depends on its probability of affecting the election outcome. Using exogenous variation arising at population cutoffs determining council sizes in Finnish municipal elections, we show that larger council size increases both pivotal probabilities and turnout. These effects are statistically significant, fairly large and robust. Finally, we use a novel instrumental variables design to show that the jumps in the pivotal probabilities are the likely candidate for explaining the increase in turnout, rather than the other observed simultaneous jumps at the council size cutoffs. Moreover, our results indicate that turnout responds only to within-party pivotal probabilities, perhaps because they are more salient to the voters than the between-party ones. |
| Keywords: | local government elections; instrumental variables; rational voting; regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2019–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:100217&r=all |
| By: | Stensholt, Eivind (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | With present (2021) tally rules, the number of seats in the Bundestag is highly volatile. In 2017 it got 709 seats, 111 of them extra-ordinary. The rules may double the influence of a voter who splits the ballot, contrary to a goal of equal influence; increased assembly size is a concomitant. The paper explains when and how this happens. A ballot’s combination of Erststimme and Zweitstimme is information now ignored; the tally is as if they were collected in separate ballot boxes. Faithful accounting requires this information, but there is strong reason to expect it will reduce the 2017 assembly size to the ordinary 598 seats stated in the Federal Elections Act. Tallying 2017 votes with the present rules, but with CDU&CSU as a recognized coalition, reduces the size by 41 seats. |
| Keywords: | Mixed member proportional; equal influence; legitimacy; assembly size |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2021–03–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2021_005&r=all |
| By: | Sylvain Béal (CRESE EA3190, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, F-25000 Besançon, France); Marc Deschamps (CRESE EA3190, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, F-25000 Besançon, France); Mostapha Diss (CRESE EA3190, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, F-25000 Besançon, France) |
| Abstract: | In a weighted voting game, each voter has a given weight and a coalition of voters is successful if the sum of its weights exceeds a given quota. Such voting systems translate the idea that voters are not all equal by assigning them different weights. In such a situation, two voters are symmetric in a game if interchanging the two voters leaves the outcome of the game unchanged. Two voters with the same weight are naturally symmetric in every weighted voting game, but the converse statement is not necessarily true. We call this latter type of scenario inconsistent weighting. We investigate the conditions that give rise to such a phenomenon within the class of weighted voting games. We also study how the choice of the quota and the total weight can affect the probability of observing inconsistent weighting. Finally, we investigate various applications where inconsistent weighting is observed. |
| Keywords: | Weighted voting games, symmetric voters, inconsistent weighting, probability. |
| JEL: | C7 D7 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crb:wpaper:2021-01&r=all |
| By: | Amory Gethin (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 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); Marc Morgan (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the transformation of electoral cleavages in Brazil since 1989 using a novel assembly of electoral surveys. Brazilian political history since redemocratization is largely a history of the rise and fall of the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT). We show that the election of Lula da Silva as President in 2002, followed by the implementation of redistributive policies by successive PT governments, was at the origin of the marked socioeconomic cleavages that emerged. In a relatively short space of time the PT transformed itself from a party of the young, highly educated, high-income elite of the Southern party of the country, to a party of the poor and lesser educated voters, increasingly located in the disadvantaged region of the Northeast. Controlling for a host of socio-demographic factors, a voter in the Northeast was 20 percentage points more likely to vote for the PT in 2018 than voters in other regions, compared to being 5 percentage points less likely to do so in 1989. In sharp contrast to other western democracies, political conflict in Brazil has followed an increasingly unidimensional class-based path. This culminated in the unification of elites and large parts of the middle class behind Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election. We argue that contextual policy-driven factors and programmatic alliances are key to understand the PT's singular evolution, and thus the transformation of electoral cleavages in Brazil. |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wilwps:halshs-03165718&r=all |
| By: | Savu, A. |
| Abstract: | I study whether austerity measures implemented by a central government incentivize electorally-motivated policy adjustments at the local level. To do so, I first quantify the effects of a controversial 2011 health-sector reform carried out in Romania, whereby a significant proportion of the country’s public hospitals was discontinued. Exploiting geographic constituency-level variation in austerity exposure created by this measure, I document a significant increase in local "voter-friendly" government spending targeted towards infrastructure investments in the policy’s catchment areas. Consistent with an electoral mechanism explaining this response, the evidence suggests that the effect is driven by the actions of local politicians affiliated with those responsible for the reform. To rule out alternative explanations, I take advantage of a second natural experiment wherein a party previously in opposition to those responsible for the closure of hospitals allied itself with the measure’s principal orchestrator. Following this re-alignment, I find heterogeneous increases in local voter-friendly spending which further corroborate the electoral mechanism. Overall, my results indicate that the electorally-driven responses of sub-national governments may partially mitigate the political costs of carrying out austerity. |
| Keywords: | Austerity, Political Costs, Central and Local Governments, Electoral Spending |
| JEL: | D72 D73 D78 H71 H72 H74 H76 H77 |
| Date: | 2021–01–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2120&r=all |
| By: | Christos Mavridis (Middlesex University London); Orestis Troumpounis (University of Padova and Lancaster University); Maurizio Zanardi (University of Surrey) |
| Abstract: | US local law enforcement agencies have been receiving substantial military equipment through the “1033 Program" during the last decades. Sheriffs, one of the agencies requesting such transfers, are directly accountable to voters for their actions, so one may wonder: how do military equipment transfers in a given county affect the re-election prospects of the county's sheriff? We construct a unique dataset on local electoral races covering 6,218 sheriff elections in 2,381 counties between 2006 and 2016 and reveal the causal effect of military transfers on sheriffs' re-election probabilities: an increase in military transfers in a given county (from none to the median value) results in an increase in the probability the county's sheriff is re-elected (by 3:6 to 9:9 percentage points). This result explains sheriffs' strong support for the “1033 Program" and suggests that the image of a “tough" sheriff in town seems to be rewarded, overall providing fresh evidence on voters' responsiveness in local office elections. |
| JEL: | D72 H56 H76 K42 |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sur:surrec:0221&r=all |
| By: | Gonzalez, Felipe (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile); Muñoz, Pablo; Prem, Mounu |
| Abstract: | We look at Chile’s transition to democracy in 1990 to study the persistence of authoritarian politics at the local level. Using new data on the universe of mayors appointed by the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), and leveraging on the arbitrary election rules that characterized the first local election in 1992, we present two main findings. First, dictatorship mayors obtained a vote premium that is larger among the last wave of incumbents and appears partially explained by an increase in local spending. Second, dictatorship mayors who were democratically elected in 1992 brought votes for the parties that collaborated with the dictatorship in subsequent elections held in democracy. These results show that the body of politicians appointed by a dictatorship can contribute to the persistence of elites and institutions. |
| Date: | 2021–01–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:d6x54&r=all |
| By: | Alberti, F; Mantilla, C |
| Abstract: | We study the provision of a public project that globally behaves as a public good but locally behaves as a private bad. This scenario imposes two problems: (i) finding a compensation that makes the project acceptable for the pre-determined host, and (ii) securing the budget to pay for the project and the required compensation. We use a market-like mechanism with two useful properties for this scenario: players can either contribute or request subsidies to fund the public project, and players have veto power over the desired project quantity. In our game, two players benefit from a waste incinerator facility, whereas the third group member, the host, is harmed if the facility is too large. We analyze the efficiency and the redistributive potential of this mechanism, with and without communication, among group members. We find that the probability of positive provision did not differ with and without communication. However, average provided quantities with respect to the efficient quantity increased from 54% to 81% with communication. We also find that contributions fell below the Lindahl taxes, allowing the players who benefit from a larger facility to accrue most of the efficiency gains. The latter result is consistent with the infrequent evidence of veto threats as a bargaining strategy. |
| Keywords: | lab experiment; NIMBY; LULU; public goods; |
| JEL: | C92 H4 Q58 |
| Date: | 2020–03–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000561:018989&r=all |
| By: | Yann Algan (Département d'économie); Nicolò Dalvit (Département d'économie); Quoc-Anh Do (Département d'économie); Alexis Le Chapelain; Yves Zenou (Research Institute of Industrial Economics) |
| Abstract: | We study how social interaction and friendship shape students' political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, the cradle of top French politicians. We exploit arbitrary assignments of students into short-term integration groups before their scholar cursus, and use the pairwise indicator of same-group membership as instrumental variable for friendship. After six months, friendship causes a reduction of differences in opinions by one third of the standard deviation of opinion gap. The evidence is consistent with a homophily-enforced mechanism, by which friendship causes initially politically-similar students to join political associations together, which reinforces their political similarity, without exercising an effect on initially politically-dissimilar pairs. Friendship affects opinion gaps by reducing divergence, therefore polarization and extremism, without forcing individuals' views to converge. Network characteristics also matter to the friendship effect. |
| Keywords: | Extremism; Friendship Effect; Homophily; Learning; Natural experiment; Polarization; Politcal opinion; Social networks |
| JEL: | C93 D72 Z13 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/6g4f57e9if8d98agaso2prcnu9&r=all |
| By: | Mariam Sy (UMR MARBEC - MARine Biodiversity Exploitation and Conservation - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - IFREMER - Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Charles Figuières (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Helene Rey-Valette (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - UMR 5211 - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Richard Howarth (Environmental Studies Program, Dartmouth College); Rutger de Wit (UMR MARBEC - MARine Biodiversity Exploitation and Conservation - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - IFREMER - Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This paper describes an empiric study of aggregation and deliberation used during citizens' workshops for the preference elicitation of 20 different ecosystem services (ESs) delivered by the Palavas coastal lagoons located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea close to Montpellier (S. France). The impact of deliberation for the preference elicitation of 20 different ecosystem services (ESs) was studied by gathering and aggregating individual preferences before deliberation that were compared to the collective aggregation after deliberation. The same aggregation rules were used before and after deliberation and we compared two different aggregation methods, i.e. Rapid Ecosystem Services Participatory Appraisal (RESPA) and Majority Judgement (MJ). RESPA had been specifically tested for ESs, while MJ evaluates the merit of each item, an ES in our case, in a predefined ordinal scale of judgment. The impact of deliberation was strongest for the RESPA method. This new information acquired from application of social choice theory is particularly useful for ecological economics studying ES, and more practically for the development of deliberative approaches for public policies. |
| Keywords: | ecosystem services,non-monetary methods,preference elicitation,deliberation,social choice theory,coastal lagoons |
| Date: | 2021–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-03145117&r=all |
| By: | Carmen Durrer de la Sota (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, WIL - World Inequality Lab); Amory Gethin (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 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); Clara Martínez-Toledano (Imperial College London, WIL - World Inequality Lab) |
| Abstract: | This paper combines post-electoral surveys to study the transformation of the structure of political cleavages in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland over the last five decades. Despite their history of linguistic, regional, and religious conflicts, all four countries share a common tradition of consensus decision-making, which has remained until the present. Yet, the weakening of historical cleavages, the emergence of new political formations (i.e. Green parties on the left and anti-immigration parties on the right), and the rise of new divides have significantly transformed their party systems since the 1980s. Support for green and left-wing parties among highest-educated voters, and for anti-immigration parties among the lower-educated has grown, while top-income earners have remained instead more supportive of the traditional right. Both the rise of new green and anti-immigration parties, but also changes within old parties have thus led to the emergence of "multi-elite party systems", as it has been shown in other Western democracies. |
| Date: | 2021–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-03165720&r=all |