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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Ogeda, Pedro Molina (Sao Paulo School of Economics); Ornelas, Emanuel (Sao Paulo School of Economics); Soares, Rodrigo R. (Insper, São Paulo) |
| Abstract: | We show that the Brazilian trade liberalization in the early 1990s led to a permanent relative decline in the vote share of left-wing presidential candidates in the regions more affected by the tariff cuts. This happened even though the shock, implemented by a right-wing party, induced a contraction in manufacturing and formal employment in the more affected regions, and despite the left's identification with protectionist policies. To rationalize this response, we consider a new institutional channel for the political effects of trade shocks: the weakening of labor unions. We provide support for this mechanism in two steps. First, we show that union presence—proxied by the number of workers directly employed by unions, by union density, and by the number of union establishments—declined in regions that became more exposed to foreign competition. Second, we show that the negative effect of tariff reductions on the votes for the left was driven exclusively by political parties with historical links to unions. Furthermore, the impact of the trade liberalization on the vote share of these parties was significant only in regions that had unions operating before the reform. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that tariff cuts reduced the vote share of the left partly through the weakening of labor unions. This institutional channel is fundamentally different from the individual-level responses, motivated by economic or identity concerns, that have been considered in the literature. |
| Keywords: | trade shocks, elections, unions, Brazil |
| JEL: | F13 D72 J51 F16 F14 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14849&r= |
| By: | Alessandra Casella (Columbia University [New York]); Antonin Macé (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) |
| Abstract: | Voters have strong incentives to increase their influence by trading votes, acquiring others' votes when preferences are strong in exchange for giving votes away when preferences are weak. But is vote trading welfare-improving or welfare-decreasing? For a practice long believed to be central to collective decisions, the lack of a clear answer is surprising. We review the theoretical literature and, when available, its related experimental tests. We begin with the analysis of logrolling - the exchange of votes for votes. We then focus on vote markets, where votes can be traded against a numeraire. We conclude with procedures allowing voters to shift votes across decisions - to trade votes with oneself only. We find that vote trading and vote markets are typically inefficient; more encouraging results are obtained by allowing voters to allocate votes across decisions. |
| Keywords: | bundling,quadratic voting,vote trading,storable votes,logrolling,Vote markets,Storable votes,Vote trading,Logrolling,Quadratic voting,Bundling,vote markets |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-02922012&r= |
| By: | Umut Keskin (Istanbul Bilgi University); M Remzi Sanver (LAMSADE - Laboratoire d'analyse et modélisation de systèmes pour l'aide à la décision - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); H Berkay Tosunlu |
| Abstract: | A voting rule is monotonic if a winning candidate never becomes a loser by being raised in voters' rankings of candidates, ceteris paribus. Plurality with a runoff is known to fail monotonicity. To see how widespread this failure is, we focus on French presidential elections since 1965. We identify mathematical conditions that allow a logically conceivable scenario of vote shifts between candidates that may lead to a monotonicity violation. We show that eight among the ten elections held since 1965 (those in 1965 and 1974 being the exceptions) exhibit this theoretical vulnerability. To be sure, the conceived scenario of vote shifts that enables a monotonicity violation may not be plausible under the political context of the considered election. Thus, we analyze the political landscape of these eight elections and argue that for two of them (2002 and 2007 elections), the monotonicity violation scenario was plausible within the conjuncture of the time. |
| Keywords: | French presidential elections,plurality with a runoff,monotonicity |
| Date: | 2021–11–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03413280&r= |
| By: | Samuel Bazzi (BU - Boston University [Boston]); Gabriel Koehler-Derrick (Harvard University [Cambridge]); Benjamin Marx (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Why do religious politics thrive in some societies but not others? This paper explores the institutional foundations of this process in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim democracy. We show that a major Islamic institution, the waqf, fostered the entrenchment of political Islam at a critical historical juncture. In the early 1960s, rural elites transferred large amounts of land into waqf —a type of inalienable charitable trust—to avoid expropriation by the government as part of a major land reform effort. Although the land reform was later undone, the waqf properties remained. We show that greater intensity of the planned reform led to more prevalent waqf land and Islamic institutions endowed as such, including religious schools, which are strongholds of the Islamist movement. We identify lasting effects of the reform on electoral support for Islamist parties, preferences for religious candidates, and the adoption of Islamic legal regulations (sharia). Overall, the land reform contributed to the resilience and eventual rise of political Islam by helping to spread religious institutions, thereby solidifying the alliance between local elites and Islamist groups. These findings shed new light on how religious institutions may shape politics in modern democracies. |
| Keywords: | Religion,Institutions,Land reform,Islam,Sharia Law |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03391857&r= |
| By: | Alvaro Calderon (Alvaro Calderon); Vasiliki Fouka (Vasiliki Fouka); Marco Tabellini (Marco Tabellini) |
| Abstract: | Between 1940 and 1970, more than 4 million African Americans moved from the South to the North of the United States, during the Second Great Migration. This same period witnessed the struggle and eventual success of the civil rights movement in ending institutionalized racial discrimination. This paper shows that the Great Migration and support for civil rights are causally linked. Predicting Black inflows with a shift-share instrument, we find that the Great Migration raised support for the Democratic Party, increased Congress members’ propensity to promote civil rights legislation, and encouraged pro-civil rights activism outside the US South. We provide different pieces of evidence that support for civil rights was not confined to the Black electorate, but was also shared by segments of the white population. |
| Keywords: | Race, diversity, civil rights, Great Migration |
| JEL: | D72 J15 N92 |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2133&r= |
| By: | Leonzio Rizzo; Massimiliano Ferraresi; Riccardo Secomandi |
| Abstract: | It is widely recognized that politicians deliberately allocate goods and services just prior to the election, and road investments are arguably among the most visible infrastructure to influence voters. Using a comprehensive dataset on Italian municipalities over the period 2010-2015, we test whether investments in roads and transport services are affected by political manipulations close to elections using as independent variables the year-in-term dummies. We exploit the staggered time of local election to show, indeed, that investment spending on road and transport in the year before election is 30% higher than in the electoral year. Further analyses suggest that our results are more marked (i) in cities guided by a mayor who can run for re-election and (ii) in municipalities with a lower share of educated voters. We isolated the portion of the (exogenous) correlation between the probability of observing an accident and the amount of expenditure on road services that is induced by the political cycle by using the year-in-the-term dummies as instruments. We did not detect any relationship between the increase of investments in road services induced by the political cycle and the local need for road safety, as the probability of having an accident in local roads remained unchanged. Taken together, these findings suggest that politicians manipulate the budget only for re-electoral purposes. Therefore, it is needed a rule, binding visible expenditures, such as those on road services, of the year before the election, or allowing visible expenditures not to exceed those of the previous year within the mandate of the mayor. Such rules would let avoid or at least reduce the estimated inefficient spending by properly programming investment according to real needs and not to electoral convenience. |
| Keywords: | Political Budget Cycle; road accidents; municipalities; local elections; road investments |
| JEL: | D72 H12 H77 Z18 |
| Date: | 2021–12–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:udf:wpaper:20210710&r= |
| By: | Patrick Mellacher |
| Abstract: | I develop a rather simple agent-based model to capture a co-evolution of opinion formation, political decision making and economic outcomes. I use this model to study how societies form opinions if their members have opposing interests. Agents are connected in a social network and exchange opinions, but differ with regard to their interests and ability to gain information about them. I show that inequality in information and economic resources can have a drastic impact on aggregated opinion. In particular, my model illustrates how a tiny, but well-informed minority can influence group decisions to their favor. This effect is amplified if these agents are able to command more economic resources to advertise their views and if they can target their advertisements efficiently, as made possible by the rise of information technology. My results contribute to the understanding of pressing questions such as climate change denial and highlight the dangers that economic and information inequality can pose for democracies. |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2111.09408&r= |