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on Collective Decision-Making |
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Issue of 2011‒05‒24
nine papers chosen by |
| By: | Hirofumi Yamamura (Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, Kobe University) |
| Abstract: | We study a one-dimensional voting game in which voters choose a policy from a one-dimensional policy set over which voters have single-peaked preferences. The purpose of this paper is to analyze coalitional behaviors under any given voting mechanism. We employ the notion of strong Nash equilibrium and identify a necessary and su¢ cient condition for a voting mechanism to possess a strong Nash equilibrium by using the minimax theorem. We moreover show that any strong Nash outcome, if it exists, results in an outcome recommended by a particular augmented median voter rule. |
| Keywords: | Single-peakedness, Augmented median voter rule, Strong Nash equilibrium, Coalition-proof Nash Equilibrium, Minimax theorem, Manipulation. |
| JEL: | D78 D72 C70 |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2011-21&r=cdm |
| By: | Florian Ade; Ronny Freier |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the interdependency of political institutions from the voter's perspective. Specifically, we are interested in three questions: (1) Does the partisan identity of the local mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election?; (2) Does this partisan identity influence in ensuing higher level elections?; and (3) Do voters condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? We collected a unique data set for Germany in which we link election results for different political institutions at the municipal level. To identify causal effects, we rely on a regression discontinuity design focusing on close election outcomes. We find that the party of the mayor receives a bonus of 4-5 percentage points in vote share in the subsequent town council elections if, and only if, mayoral and council elections are held simultaneously. With regard to higher level elections, we find no effect for the party identity of the mayor on federal and European election outcomes. Using run-off mayor races, which are held shortly after council elections, we show that voters punish parties that performed strongly in the council election. To explain our empirical findings, we explore two mechanisms from the theoretical literature. We conclude that there is evidence both for an incumbency externality effect as well as a preference for divided government effect in opposite directions. |
| Keywords: | Regression discontinuity design, municipality data, local election results, divided government effect, incumbency externality effect |
| JEL: | H10 H11 H77 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1121&r=cdm |
| By: | Gustavo J Bobonis; Luis R Cámara Fuertes; Rainer Schwabe |
| Abstract: | Does the disclosure of information about corrupt activities induce a sustained reduction in corruption? We use publicly released routine audits of municipal governments in Puerto Rico to answer this question. We first develop a political agency model where voters re-elect incumbents based on their performance while in office. We show that, because voters cannot directly observe incumbents’ actions, an incumbent whose reputation improved in the previous term is likely to engage in more rent-seeking activities in a future term. Guided by this model, we use longitudinal data on audit results to examine the long-term consequences of providing information to voters on levels of political corruption. We find that municipal corruption levels in subsequent audits are on average the same in municipalities audited preceding the previous election and those not audited then. In spite of this, mayors in municipalities audited preceding the previous election have higher re-election rates, suggesting that audits enable voters to select more competent politicians. We conclude that short-term information dissemination policies do not necessarily align politicians’ long-term actions with voter preferences as politicians exploit their reputational gains by extracting more rents from office. |
| Keywords: | corruption; information; political agency; dynamic incentives |
| JEL: | D72 O12 |
| Date: | 2011–05–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-428&r=cdm |
| By: | Axel Dreher (Heidelberg University); James Raymond Vreeland (Georgetown University) |
| Abstract: | This study explores a basic idea in political economy: Trading money for political influence. Our focus is at the level of international institutions, where governments may exploit their influence in one organization to gain leverage over another. In particular, we consider the lending activities of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and voting behavior at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Analyzing an original dataset on the successful and failed resolutions of the UNSC, we find evidence of vote-buying. |
| Keywords: | IMF; UN Security Council; Voting; Aid |
| JEL: | O19 O11 F35 |
| Date: | 2011–05–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:078&r=cdm |
| By: | Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay (Department of Economics, University of Birmingham); Mandar Oak (School of Economics, University of Adelaide) |
| Abstract: | We analyze an agency model of political competition to examine whether con?ict encourages hawkish behavior, and if such behavior can itself aggravate con?ict. We consider situations of conflict between a state and an insurgent group, such as conflict over a piece of land. Negotiations are carried out on behalf of the state by a democratically elected leader whose ability and ideology are imperfectly observed by the electorate. A more capable leader can take a hardline position in the negotiations (i.e. cede less land to the insurgents) at a lower expected cost (modeled as the cost of continued insurgency) than a less capable one. Similarly, an ideologically hawkish leader enjoys greater intrinsic utility from retaining land than a less hawkish leader. Two main results that emerge are: certain types of politicians may be excessively hawkish as compared to their first best policy choices, which itself increases the probability of conflict; and for any credible voting strategy, the re-election probability of a hawk is greater than that of a dove. Finally, we show that the voting equilibrium of this game does not always achieve a constrained Pareto optimum suggesting that third party mediation may improve welfare. |
| Keywords: | Confl?ict, hawkish drift |
| JEL: | C72 D82 P16 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:adl:wpaper:2011-24&r=cdm |
| By: | Allender, William J.; Richards, Timothy J.; Fang, Di; Doyon, Maurice |
| Abstract: | Spending on political advertising increases with every election cycle, not only for congressional or presidential candidates, but also for state-level ballot initiatives. There is little research in marketing, however, on the effectiveness of political advertising at this level. In this study, we conduct an experimental analysis of advertisements used during the 2008 campaign to mandate new animal welfare standards in California (Proposition 2). Using subjects' willingness to pay for cage-free eggs as a proxy for their likely voting behavior, we investigate whether advertising provides real information to likely voters, and thus sharpens their existing attitudes toward the issue, or whether advertising can indeed change preferences. We find that advertising in support of Proposition 2 was more effective in raising subjects' willingness to pay for cage-free eggs than ads in opposition were in reducing it, but we also find that ads in support of the measure reduce the dispersion of preferences and thus polarize attitudes toward the initiative. More generally, political ads are found to contain considerably more "hype" than "real information" in the sense of Johnson and Myatt (2006). |
| Keywords: | Animal Welfare, Proposition 2, Cage Free eggs, Willingness to Pay, BDM auction, Political Advertising, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing, Political Economy, Production Economics, Public Economics, |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea11:104224&r=cdm |
| By: | Ilan Nehama (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we analyze judgement aggregation problems in which a group of agents independently votes on a set of complex propositions that has some interdependency constraint between them (e.g., transitivity when describing preferences). We consider the issue of judgement aggregation from the perspective of approximation. That is, we generalize the previous results by studying approximate judgement aggregation. We relax the main two constraints assumed in the current literature, Consistency and Independence and consider mechanisms that only approximately satisfy these constraints, that is, satisfy them up to a small portion of the inputs. The main question we raise is whether the relaxation of these notions significantly alters the class of satisfying aggregation mechanisms. The recent works for preference aggregation of Kalai, Mossel, and Keller fit into this framework. The main result of this paper is that, as in the case of preference aggregation, in the case of a subclass of a natural class of aggregation problems termed `truth-functional agendas', the set of satisfying aggregation mechanisms does not extend non-trivially when relaxing the constraints. Our proof techniques involve boolean Fourier transform and analysis of voter influences for voting protocols. The question we raise for Approximate Aggregation can be stated using terms of Property Testing. For instance, as a corollary from our result we get a generalization of the classic result for property testing of linearity of boolean functions. |
| Keywords: | approximate aggregation, discursive dilemma, truth-functional agendas, inconsistency index, dependency index, computational social choice |
| Date: | 2011–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:huj:dispap:dp574&r=cdm |
| By: | Erik Oddvar Eriksen; John Erik Fossum |
| Abstract: | This paper shows that the main pattern of European democratisation has unfolded along the lines of an EU organised as a multilevel system of representative parliamentary government and not as a system of deliberative governance as the transnationalists propound. But the multilevel EU has developed a structure of representation that is theoretically challenging. In order to come to grips with this we present an institutional variant of deliberative theory, which understands democracy as the combination of a principle of justification and an organisational form. It comes with the following explanatory mechanisms: claimsmaking, justification and learning which in the EU also program institutional copying and emulation mechanisms. We show that the EU has established an incomplete system of representative democracy steeped in a distinct representation-deliberation interface, which has emerged through a particular and distinct configuration of democratisation mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | deliberative democracy; democratization; European Parliament; institutions; legitimacy; national parliaments; political representation; political science |
| Date: | 2011–04–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erp:reconx:p0098&r=cdm |
| By: | Fabio FIORILLO ([n.a.]) |
| Abstract: | Second generation theory of fiscal federalism do not consider two questions. 1) In small councils the relation between citizens and administrators is stronger than the one depicted in accountability models: in a small councils, citizens know directly and personally the administrators and they control them daily, not only in the electoral dates. 2) Local governments interpret and represent the local citizens' wishes to central government. Thus, they bargain with central government in order to represent local interests at central level. In this paper, even if governments are non benevolent both at local and central level, the accuracy in interpreting citizens' wishes is higher in small councils than in big ones, because citizens' control is higher in the former. On the contrary, the capacity of a council to make its requests be satisfied by central government is higher for a big council than for a small one. Thus, when the dimension of local government increases, the effectiveness of representation activity increases, but the objectives of citizens diverge from administrators' ones. Citizens face a trade-off between the strength of their local council in representing their interests at central level and the accuracy (accountability) in representing them. In this paper we propose a model which can tackle these two issues, we investigate on advantages of a territorial reform and we empirically validate the model. |
| Keywords: | Accountability, Fiscal Federalism, Interests Representation, Intergovernmental Grants, Territorial Reform |
| JEL: | H71 H77 |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anc:wpaper:356&r=cdm |