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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Leonie Geyer (Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Germany); Patrick Mellacher (University of Graz, Austria) |
| Abstract: | We study strategic party interaction in a spatial voting model where voters' ideological positions may change. Building on a rich empirical and theoretical literature, we assume that voters align their ideology with others who are sufficiently close to them (social influence with bounded confidence) as well as with the party that they support (party attraction). We show that these changes have strong implications on the results of the party competition model by Laver (2005). Two strategies stand out in our simulations: Aggregators, who always follow the mean policy of their supporters, and predators, who always chase the strongest party. Aggregators are most likely to win in a large corridor of the parameter space. However, predators can outperform them if party attraction is strong. This is interesting because predators are on average the worst-performing parties in the static voter distribution benchmark. We argue that these results are connected to real-world debates about how mainstream parties should react to the rise of extremist parties, as the two strategies epitomize debates about focusing on own strengths and supporters (aggregators) vs. adapting towards successful extremists (predators). We also demonstrate that the level of polarization and fragmentation of parties and voters is strongly affected by social influence and party attraction. While medium-sized confidence bounds and party attraction increase the polarization of voters and parties, unconstrained social influence decreases it. |
| Keywords: | Spatial voting model, opinion dynamics, agent-based model. |
| JEL: | C63 D71 D72 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2024-19 |
| By: | Federle, Jonathan-Julian; Mohr, Cathrin; Schularick, Moritz |
| Abstract: | We study the political consequences of inflation surprises, focusing on votes for extremist and populist parties in 365 elections in 18 advanced economies since 1948. Inflation surprises are regularly followed by a substantial increase in vote shares of extremist, anti-system, and populist parties. An inflation surprise of 10 percentage points leads to a 15% increase in their vote share, comparable to the increase typically seen after financial crises. We show that the change in voting behavior is particularly pronounced when real wages decline, and less evident when real wages are not affected. Our paper points to considerable political after-effects of unexpected inflation. |
| Keywords: | Inflation, Economic Voting, Extremism, Populism, Radicalization |
| JEL: | D72 E31 N40 N10 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:308099 |
| By: | Charles F. Manski |
| Abstract: | The relationship of policy choice by majority voting and by maximization of utilitarian welfare has long been discussed. I consider choice between a status quo and a proposed policy when persons have interpersonally comparable cardinal utilities taking values in a bounded interval, voting is compulsory, and each person votes for a policy that maximizes utility. I show that knowledge of the attained status quo welfare and the voting outcome yields an informative bound on welfare with the proposed policy. The bound contains the value of status quo welfare, so the better utilitarian policy is not known. The minimax-regret decision and certain Bayes decisions choose the proposed policy if its vote share exceeds the known value of status quo welfare. This procedure differs from majority rule, which chooses the proposed policy if its vote share exceeds 1/2. |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2412.18714 |
| By: | Otrachshenko, Vladimir; Popova, Olga |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to a better understanding of the drivers of electoral support for Green parties and the environmental actions they promote, which is key to ensuring the long-term feasibility of environmental policies. We examine whether individual environmental preferences translate into voting for Green parties and analyze the mechanisms behind this effect. Employing an individual-level survey from developed and developing economies matched with the political parties' programs globally, we find that individuals who prefer environmental protection over economic growth are likely to translate their preferences into voting and supporting Green parties. These findings are robust to alternative definitions of Green parties and environmental preferences and to potential endogeneity concerns. The key mechanisms behind this relationship are changes in the stringency of environmental regulations, individual economic and social insecurity, and individual- and country-level exposure to environmental changes. The effect of environmental preferences on Green party voting is less pronounced among individuals living in rural areas and economically disadvantaged individuals, including those with lower education and income. These results suggest that support for Green parties and environmental policies is contingent on voters' economic security even when environmental preferences are strong, emphasizing the need for Green parties to address voters' economic concerns. |
| Keywords: | environmental preferences, Green parties, sustainable development, voting |
| JEL: | D72 H11 Q56 Q58 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1525 |
| By: | N. Bradley Fox; Benjamin Bruyns |
| Abstract: | The standard voting methods in the United States, plurality and ranked choice (or instant runoff) voting, are susceptible to significant voting failures. These flaws include Condorcet and majority failures as well as monotonicity and no-show paradoxes. We investigate alternative ranked choice voting systems using variations of the points-based Borda count which avoid monotonicity paradoxes. These variations are based on the way partial ballots are counted and on extending the values of the points assigned to each rank in the ballot. In particular, we demonstrate which voting failures are possible for each variation and then empirically study 421 U.S. ranked choice elections conducted from 2004 to 2023 to determine the frequency of voting failures when using five Borda variations. Our analysis demonstrates that the primary vulnerability of majority failures is rare or nonexistent depending on the variation. Other voting failures such as truncation or compromise failures occur more frequently compared to instant runoff voting as a trade-off for avoiding monotonicity paradoxes. |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2501.00618 |
| By: | Bhattacharjee, A.; Holly, S.; Wasseja, M. |
| Abstract: | Transcripts from the US Federal Open Markets Committee provide, albeit with a lag, valuable information on the monetary policymaking process at the Federal Reserve Bank. We use the data compiled by Chappell et al. (2005b) on preferred interest rates (not votes) of individual FOMC members. Together with information on which monetary policy decisions are based, we use these preferred rates to understand decision making in the FOMC, focussing both on cross-member heterogeneity and interaction among the members of the committee. Our contribution is to provide a method of unearthing otherwise unobservable interactions between the members of the FOMC. We find substantial heterogeneity in the policy reaction function across members. Further, we identify significant interactions between individuals on the committee. The nature of these interdependencies tell us something about information sharing and strategic interactions within the FOMC and provide interesting comparisons with the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. |
| Keywords: | Monetary Policy, Interest Rates, FOMC Decision Making, Spatial Weights Matrix, Spatial Lag Model |
| JEL: | E42 E43 E50 E58 C31 C34 |
| Date: | 2024–12–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2469 |
| By: | Michael Finus (University of Graz, Austria); Francesco Furini (University of Hamburg, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We analyze a two-stage coalition formation game in which the provision of the global public good is not only associated with variable costs but also with fixed costs. We consider the assumptions that signatories share or do not share fixed costs. We show that fixed costs may imply corner solutions for equilibrium public good provision levels and generate several different coalition formation scenarios. Some scenarios are a game changer in that stable agreements and global welfare gains from cooperation are large. That is, the well-known conclusion about the “paradox of cooperation†may break down in the light of fixed costs. |
| Keywords: | Global Public Good Provision, International Treaties, Coalition Stability, Fixed Costs. |
| JEL: | C72 D62 H41 H87 Q50 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2024-18 |
| By: | Haotian Chen; Jack Kappelman |
| Abstract: | The United States leads the world in the number of violent mass shootings that occur each year, and policy making on firearms remains polarized along party lines. Are legislators responsive to mass shootings? We estimate the latent positions of nearly 2, 000 state legislators on gun policy from their roll-call voting records on firearm-related bills from 2011 to 2022. Employing a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that mass shootings within or near a state legislator's district do not alter their voting behavior on firearm policy, on average, for members of both parties. Our estimated effects of mass shootings on treated legislators' support for restrictive gun policies (on a -1 to 1 scale) range from a 4.8% reduction among California Democrats and a 0.9% increase among California Republicans to, across six total states, a 5% (among Democrats) and 7.1% (among Republicans) increase, with 95% confidence intervals spanning opposite directions. We conclude that, on average, mass shootings fail to produce changes in a legislator's support (opposition) for restrictive (permissive) firearms bills. Our findings suggest that even the most heinous acts of mass violence -- that are squarely in the domain of events that state legislators might respond to -- fail to produce any measurable effects on legislators' positions on firearm-related policy. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2501.01084 |
| By: | Michelitch, Kristin; Horowitz, Jeremy; Lemoli, Giacomo |
| Abstract: | Where political parties form around coalitions of ethnic groups, as in many sub-Saharan African democracies, political actors’ favoritism toward their own supporters plays a prominent and normatively fraught role in electoral competition and public service delivery. However, little is known about how citizens normatively evaluate whether such “clientelistic behaviors” should be considered illegal and punishable. This study hypothesizes that citizens will desire greater punishment for clientelistic actions when (a) the behavior is more distortionary (e.g., targeting coethnics vs. copartisans vs. general people), and (b) the citizen holds opposing ethnopartisanship to the ac-tor. We also posit a positive interaction between the two. Using a survey experiment conducted in Kenya (n=1, 946) with Kikuyu and Luo respondents ahead of the 2017 national elections, we ask participants to assign punishment for various clientelistic be-haviors. The results show that citizens systematically award more punishment when actors target their supporters rather than general people, with little difference between coethnic versus copartisan targeting. Citizens also punish actors more from the oppos-ing ethnopartisanship, but there is no systematic interaction effect between the level of distortion and (un)shared ethnopartisanship. |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:130034 |