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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Vincent Pons; Clémence Tricaud |
| Abstract: | To predict others’ behavior and make their own choices, voters and candidates can rely on information provided by polls and past election results. We isolate the impact of candidates’ rankings using an RDD in French local and parliamentary two-round elections, where up to 3 or 4 candidates can qualify for the second round. Candidates who barely ranked first in the first round are more likely to run in the second round (5.6pp), win (5.8pp), and win conditionally on running (2.9 to 5.9pp), than those who barely ranked second. The effects are even larger for ranking second instead of third (23.5, 9.9, and 6.9 to 12.2pp), and also present for ranking third instead of fourth (14.6, 2.2, and 3.0 to 5.0pp). The impact of rankings is largest when the candidates have the same political orientation (making coordination relatively more important and desirable), but it remains strong when two candidates only qualify for the second round (and there is no need for coordination). Overall, our evidence suggests that both coordination and bandwagon effects are important drivers of the behavior of candidates and voters and of election outcomes. |
| JEL: | D72 D83 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26599&r=all |
| By: | Antoine Camous; Russell Cooper |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the determination of income taxes in a dynamic setting with human capital accumulation. The goal is to understand the factors that support an outcome without complete redistribution, given a majority of relatively poor agents. In the analysis, the internal dynamics of income are not sufficient to prevent complete redistribution under majority rule without commitment. However, a political influence game across the population limits the support for expropriatory taxation and preserves incentives. In some cases, the outcome of the game corresponds with the optimal allocation under commitment. |
| JEL: | D72 D74 E62 H31 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26654&r=all |
| By: | Freille, S.; Avramovich, C.; Moncarz, P.; Sofietti, P. |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the relationship between political influence activities by interest groups and benefits obtained in the form of public contracts. We propose an electoral competition model where interest groups make ex-ante campaign contributions to candidates and ex-post lobbying contributions (efforts). Campaign contributions are useful to bias the election result although an aggressive campaign fight encourages interest groups to concentrate in lobbying activities. Using a novel and unique dataset at the individual level, we find that lobbying meetings are positively correlated with public contract amount and the probability of obtaining a contract. This result holds when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Campaign contributions are not significantly related to either public contract amount or the probability of winning contracts. |
| Keywords: | Corrupción, Democracia, Investigación socioeconómica, Transparencia, |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblwop:1392&r=all |
| By: | Epper Thomas; Fehr Ernst; Senn Julien |
| Abstract: | Increasing inequality and associated egalitarian sentiments have again put redistribution on the political agenda. Support for redistribution may also be affected by altruistic and egalitarian preferences, but knowledge about the distribution of these preferences in the broader population and how they relate to political support for redistributive policies is still scarce. In this paper, we take advantage of Swiss direct democracy, where people voted several times in national plebiscites on strongly redistributive policies, to study the link between other-regarding preferences and support for redistribution in a broad sample of the Swiss population. Based on a recently developed non-parametric clustering procedure, we identify three disjunct groups of individuals with fundamentally different other-regarding preferences: (i) a large share of inequality averse people, (ii) a somewhat smaller yet still large share of people with an altruistic concern for social welfare and the worse off, and (iii) a considerable minority of primarily selfish individuals. Controlling for a large number of determinants of support for redistribution, we document that inequality aversion and altruistic concerns play an important role for redistributive voting that is particularly pronounced for above-median income earners. However, the role of these motives differs depending on the nature of redistributive proposals. Inequality aversion has large and robust effects in plebiscites that demand income reductions for the rich, while altruistic concerns play no significant role in these plebiscites. |
| Keywords: | Social preferences, altruism, inequality aversion, preference heterogeneity, demand for redistribution |
| JEL: | D31 D72 H23 H24 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:339&r=all |
| By: | Bullock, J. |
| Abstract: | There are many journalistic and anecdotal accounts about the prevalence of electoral corrals in Brazil, geographic areas where brokers, politicians, or community leaders influence residents to vote for a specific candidate. In this paper, I investigate one particular type of suspected electoral corral: the favela, urban slum. This analysis focuses on the 1000+ favelas in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I explore whether or not vote share is indeed more concentrated in urban slums, and then whether or not vote concentration is related to criminal dominance. I contend that politicians in Rio de Janeiro have incentives to work with criminal groups in order to get more votes, and that finding a way to access these electoral corrals may be an election-winning strategy. Using novel, geospatial data and introducing a new text dataset on criminal dominance in Rio de Janeiro, I show that vote concentration is indeed more concentrated in urban slums and, within these slums, even more concentrated in slums that have steady criminal dominance from one election to the next. |
| Keywords: | Ciencia conductual, Democracia, Desarrollo, Investigación socioeconómica, Pobreza, Violencia, Corrupción, |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dbl:dblwop:1390&r=all |
| By: | Federica Ceron (UP1 UFR02 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - UFR d'Économie - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne); Stéphane Gonzalez (UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne], GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - Université de Lyon - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | We provide an axiomatic characterization of Approval Voting without the approval balloting assumption. The dichotomous structure of the informational basis of Approval voting as well as its aggregative rationale are jointly derived from a set of normative conditions on the voting procedure. The first one is the well-known social-theoretic principle of consistency; the second one, ballot richness, requires voters to be able to express a sufficiently rich set of opinions; the last one, dubbed no single-voter overrides, demands that the addition of a voter to an electorate cannot radically change the outcome of the election. Such result is promising insofar it suggests that the informational basis of voting may have a normative relevance that deserves formal treatment. |
| Keywords: | Approval voting,balloting procedure,Informational basis,Evaluative voting |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02440615&r=all |
| By: | Caroline Le Pennec; Vincent Pons |
| Abstract: | We use 201,000 observations from repeated survey data in 61 elections and 9 OECD countries since 1952 to study the formation of vote choices and policy preferences in the electoral season and assess how TV debates contribute to this process. We find that the share of voters who state a pre-election vote intention corresponding to their final vote choice increases by 15 percentage points in the two months preceding the election. Changes in individual vote choices mostly result from changes in beliefs on competing candidates and in issue salience, and they generate aggregate shifts in predicted vote shares. Instead, policy preferences remain remarkably stable over time. We use an event study to estimate the impact of TV debates, and find that they affect significantly neither individual vote choice and preference formation nor aggregate vote shares. This suggests that information continuously received by voters exerts more influence on their behavior. |
| JEL: | D72 D83 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26572&r=all |
| By: | McGaughey, Ewan (King's College, London) |
| Abstract: | Why do shareholders monopolise voting rights in UK companies, and are trade unions the only way to get meaningful workplace representation? In 1967 a Labour Party policy document first coined the phrase that a ‘single channel’ for representation should ‘in the normal’ case mean trade unions. Since then, it has been said the labour movement embraced an ‘adversarial’ rather than a ‘constitutional’ conception of corporations, neglecting legal rights to worker voice in enterprise governance. This article shows that matters were not so simple. It explains the substantial history of legal rights to vote in British workplaces, and competition from the rival constitutional conception: employee share schemes. The UK has the oldest corporations – namely universities – which have consistently embedded worker participation rights in law. Britain has among the world’s most sophisticated ‘second channel’ participation rights in pension board governance. Developing with collective bargaining, it had the world’s first private corporations with legal participation rights. Although major plans in the 1920s for codetermination in rail and coal fell through, it maintained a ‘third channel’ of worker representatives on boards during the 20th century in numerous sectors, including ports, gas, post, steel, and buses. At different points every major political party had general proposals for votes at work. The narrative of the ‘single channel’ of workplace representation, and an ‘adversarial’ conception of the company contains some truth, but there has never been one size of regulation for all forms of enterprise. (2018) 47(1) Industrial Law Journal 76. |
| Date: | 2018–01–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:lawarx:2xn6q&r=all |
| By: | Merriman, Ben |
| Abstract: | This article examines public involvement in the six-year administrative review process of Waukesha, Wisconsin’s application to draw water from Lake Michigan to replace its radium-contaminated local water supply. The article shows that public positions on the proposal inverted the typical relationship between partisanship and environmental attitudes, prompting both supporters and opponents to ignore scientific evidence and the central matter of water safety. In successive rounds of state and regional administrative review, these political stances induced administrators to engage in increasingly legalistic forms of assessment. Although Waukesha’s application was approved in 2016, these administrative dynamics may limit the ability of the recently-enacted Great Lakes Compact to address current and prospective water safety problems in the region. The case typifies an emerging pattern in water governance in the United States: contentious administrative politics drive cooperative agreements to resemble adversarial proceedings, in turn limiting their ability to adapt to new environmental problems. Citation: Merriman, Ben. 2017. “Testing the Great Lakes Compact: Administrative Politics and the Challenge of Environmental Adaptation.” Politics & Society 45(3): 441-466. |
| Date: | 2017–12–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:rjea7&r=all |
| By: | Jeremy Bowles; Horacio Larreguy |
| Abstract: | We examine how candidate selection into the supply of policy information determines its electoral effects. In a nationwide debate initiative designed to solicit and rebroadcast policy promises from Liberian legislative candidates, we randomized the encouragement of debate participation across districts. The intervention substantially increased the debate participation of leading candidates but led to uneven electoral returns for these candidates, with incumbents benefiting at the expense of challengers. These results are driven by differences in compliance: complying incumbents, but not challengers, positively selected into debate participation based on the congruence of their policy priorities with those of their constituents. |
| Keywords: | accountability, information, selection |
| JEL: | D72 O12 |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cid:wpfacu:375&r=all |
| By: | Andre Assumpcao |
| Abstract: | This paper examines voters' responses to the disclosure of electoral crime information in large democracies. I focus on Brazil, where the electoral court makes candidates' criminal records public before every election. Using a sample of local candidates running for office between 2004 and 2016, I find that a conviction for an electoral crime reduces candidates' probability of election and vote share by 10.3 and 12.9 percentage points (p.p.), respectively. These results are not explained by (potential) changes in judge, voter, or candidate behavior over the electoral process. I additionally perform machine classification of court documents to estimate heterogeneous punishment for severe and trivial crimes. I document a larger electoral penalty (6.5 p.p.) if candidates are convicted for severe crimes. These results supplement the information shortcut literature by examining how judicial information influences voters' decisions and showing that voters react more strongly to more credible sources of information. |
| Date: | 2019–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1912.10958&r=all |