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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Kirill S. Evdokimov |
| Abstract: | An agenda-setter repeatedly proposes a spatial policy to voters until some proposal is accepted. Voters have distinct but correlated preferences and receive private signals about the common state. I investigate whether the agenda-setter retains the power to screen voters as players become perfectly patient and private signals become perfectly precise. I show that the extent of this power depends on the relative precision of private signals and the conflict of preferences among voters, confirming the crucial role of committee setting and single-peaked preferences. When the private signals have equal precision, the agenda-setter can achieve the full-information benchmark. When one voter receives an asymptotically more precise signal, the agenda-setter's power to screen depends on preference diversity. These results imply that the lack of commitment to a single proposal can benefit the agenda-setter. Surprisingly, an increase in the voting threshold can allow the agenda-setter to extract more surplus. |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2402.06495&r=cdm |
| By: | Cesi Cruz; Julien Labonne; Francesco Trebbi |
| Abstract: | Populist politicians have leveraged direct connections with voters to win elections worldwide, often using emotional rather than policy appeals. Do these forms of campaigning work for programmatic politicians as well? We partner with a mainstream opposition political party to implement a field experiment during the 2019 Philippine Senatorial election to test the effectiveness of: (i) direct in-person appeals providing policy information; (ii) the addition of an activity designed to engender positive emotion. We show that direct engagement providing policy information increases vote share for the party, even in a clientelistic context. Additionally, while the emotional activity increases engagement with the campaign in the short term, the information-only treatment was more effective. Last, we present evidence that the treatments operated through learning and persuasion channels: treated voters were more likely to know the party, more certain about their knowledge, and gave higher ratings to the party’s quality and proposed policies. |
| JEL: | D7 D73 P0 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32112&r=cdm |
| By: | Satyajit Chatterjee; Burcu Eyigungor |
| Abstract: | Ideology scores derived from U.S. congressional roll-call voting patterns show that the ideological distance between the two parties along the primary dimension changes inversely with the ideological distance along the secondary dimension. To explain this inverse association, a model of party competition with endogenous party membership and a two-dimensional ideology space is developed. If the distribution of voter preferences is uniform on a disk, equilibrium ideological distances along the two dimensions are inversely related. The model can quantitatively account for the historical movements in ideological distances as a function of changes in the ideological orientation of the two parties. |
| Keywords: | polarization; primaries; partisan sorting; political economy |
| JEL: | D72 P16 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:97777&r=cdm |
| By: | Franz Dietrich (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, CNRS); Kai Spiekermann (London School of Economics (LSE)) |
| Abstract: | Does pre-voting group deliberation increase majority competence? To address this question, we develop a probabilistic model of opinion formation and deliberation. Two new jury theorems, one pre-deliberation and one post-deliberation, suggest that deliberation is beneficial. Successful deliberation mitigates three voting failures: (1) overcounting widespread evidence, (2) neglecting evidential inequality, and (3) neglecting evidential complementarity. Simulations and theoretic arguments confirm this. But there are five systematic exceptions where deliberation reduces majority competence, always by increasing failure (1). Our analysis recommends deliberation that is 'participatory', 'even', but possibly 'unequal', i.e., that involves substantive sharing, privileges no evidences, but possibly privileges some persons |
| Keywords: | jury theorems; group deliberation; social choice theory; majority voting |
| JEL: | D70 D71 D8 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:22011r&r=cdm |
| By: | Lisa Bruttel (University of Potsdam, CEPA); Gerald Eisenkopf (University of Vechta); Juri Nithammer (University of Potsdam) |
| Abstract: | Leadership plays an important role for the efficient and fair solution of social dilemmas but the effectiveness of a leader can vary substantially. Two main factors of leadership impact are the ability to induce high contributions by all group members and the (expected) fair use of power. Participants in our experiment decide about contributions to a public good. After all contributions are made, the leader can choose how much of the joint earnings to assign to herself; the remainder is distributed equally among the followers. Using machine learning techniques, we study whether the content of initial open statements by the group members predicts their behavior as a leader and whether groups are able to identify such clues and endogenously appoint a “good” leader to solve the dilemma. We find that leaders who promise fairness are more likely to behave fairly, and that followers appoint as leaders those who write more explicitly about fairness and efficiency. However, in their contribution decision, followers focus on the leader’s first-move contribution and place less importance on the content of the leader’s statements. |
| Keywords: | Leadership, Public good, Voting, Promises, Experiment |
| JEL: | C92 D23 D72 D83 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pot:cepadp:73&r=cdm |
| By: | Michela Cella; Elena Manzoni; Francesco Scervini |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study whether and how the belief that the gender of politicians affects their competence on different issues influences electoral outcomes depending on the salience of those issues. We first propose a theoretical model of issue-specific gender bias in elections which can describe both the presence of a real comparative advantage (‘kernel-of-truth’ case, or stereotype) and the case of pure prejudice. We show that, if the bias exists, it influences electoral results and that its effect can be partially reversed by successful information transmission during the electoral campaign. We then empirically investigate the relation between issue salience and women’s performance using US data on House and Senate elections. Estimates of issue salience are obtained using Google Trends data. Exploiting the longitudinal dimension of the dataset at district level and an IV strategy to rule out possible endogeneity, we show a positive correlation between the salience of those issues that are typically listed as feminine and women’s electoral outcomes. We therefore conclude that a bias indeed exists. The average effect of the bias is sizable with respect to the share of votes for women candidates, even if not large enough to significantly increase the probability that women candidates win elections. |
| Keywords: | gender bias, elections, female politicians |
| JEL: | D72 J16 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10922&r=cdm |
| By: | Massimo Bordignon (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Tommaso Colussi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore); Francesco Porcelli |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates the impact of populist governments on public policies and finances. We focus on Italian local governments (i.e. municipalities) over the 2010-2019 period, when a populists, i.e. the Five Stars Movement, became the most voted party in the country. We first document that the re-election probability of incumbent mayors drops by half when they are populist. While populist mayors are not less qualified than mainstream parties, they are significantly younger and less experienced. Estimates from a stacked diff-in-diff design comparing early to not-yet treated municipalities show that the populist government experience significantly worsen municipal finances. Populist mayors also fail to promote social and environmental policies that align with the political demands of their voters, possibly contributing to their difficulties in securing re-election. |
| Keywords: | Populism, Local Governments, Fiscal Policy, Inequality. |
| JEL: | H70 H72 P43 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie1:def132&r=cdm |
| By: | Pietro Battiston; Simona Gamba; Sharon G. Harrison |
| Abstract: | We run an experiment where subjects play a standard repeated two player public good game looking at the effect of being matched to a subject with different endowment - and keeping fixed the overall distribution of endowments. Differently from the existing literature, all subjects are aware of the existing heterogeneity in endowments, regardless of whether they are assigned to a homogeneous or heterogeneous group. Moreover, since in modern societies financial heterogeneity typically correlates with many other forms of heterogeneity, including habits, tastes and membership in given social groups, we look at how financial heterogeneity interacts with in-group vs. out-group feeling, using randomly formed groups. While neither economic integration nor group membership alone significantly affect overall contributions, and hence welfare, the two strongly interact: being matched to a partner with a different endowment and from the other group results in particularly low contributions. Similarly, being matched to a partner who is from the other group and has low endowment results in particularly low contributions. |
| Keywords: | public good game, economic segregation, in-group effect, laboratory experiment |
| JEL: | C90 H41 C92 D31 |
| Date: | 2024–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pie:dsedps:2024/305&r=cdm |
| By: | Saibu, Ghadafi |
| Abstract: | Does the length of time passing between elections and the announcement of elections results increase the risk of post-election violence? The declaration of official election results is a crucial moment in the electoral cycle. When electoral management bodies (EMBs) take longer than expected to announce official election results, it can signal to the opposition that the election is being stolen. Following this logic, this paper argues that the length of time between elections and the announcement of the official results acts as a signal of possible voter fraud, thereby increasing incentives for post-election violence. Hence, the paper hypothesises that a long length of time between elections and the announcement of official results increases the risk of post-election violence. This hypothesis is examined with an original dataset of election results declarations in African countries from 1997 to 2022. After controlling for important confounders that could influence delays in reporting and violence, the article empirically demonstrates that a longer length of time between elections and the announcement of official election results increases the risk of post-election violence. In doing so, this paper makes a significant contribution to studies of elections, and electoral violence. Its provision of a new dataset on election results declarations in African countries is also a significant contribution. |
| Keywords: | Election violence, delayed elections, post-election violence, elections results declarations, announcement of elections results, Africa |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:diedps:283125&r=cdm |