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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Hoch, Felix; Kellermann, Kim Leonie |
| Abstract: | Why should political parties say what they do not want instead of saying what they want? In this paper, we introduce the concept of negative positioning into spatial models of voting and discuss its relevance as a campaigning tool in European multiparty systems. By negative positioning, we refer to the rejection, denial or criticism of opposing positions on a political issue scale without providing information on what a party's own position is instead. We argue that negative positioning is an attractive tool in reaction to high issue salience among voters as it allows to acknowledge the respective issue without costly commitment to or design of own policy proposals. We provide a first empirical test of our concept for elections held in 26 European countries between 2002 and 2018, examining immigration as an issue with a highly volatile salience. We use data on voter issue salience from the Eurobarometer and on party positions from the Manifesto Project Database. Indeed we find that if an issue is highly salient among voters, parties increase the share of negative positioning on that issue in their manifestos. Interestingly, negative positioning is more prevalent among smaller, opposition and extreme parties. |
| Keywords: | issue salience,party positioning,negative positioning,negative campaigning |
| JEL: | C33 D71 D72 D78 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ciwdps:12020&r=all |
| By: | Eisl, Andreas |
| Abstract: | In recent years, all eurozone member states have introduced national fiscal rules, which put limits on public deficits and debt. Fiscal rules reduce the fiscal policy discretion of politicians and affect their capacity to use public budgets for macroeconomic steering and redistribution. While such institutional discretion constraints run against the traditional policy preferences of social democratic parties, it is puzzling why they supported national fiscal rule reforms during the European debt crisis. This paper argues that the concept of structural deficit rules, central to reform efforts across the eurozone, allowed for the formation of an ambiguous consensus between center-right and center-left parties. While conservative and liberal parties are generally supportive of institutional discretion constraints, structural deficit rules - in contrast to nominal deficit rules - allowed social democratic and other left-wing parties to link such rules with their broader policy preferences of Keynesian countercyclical policymaking and the protection of tax revenues across the economic cycle to ensure the state's capacity for redistribution. Drawing on three country case studies (Germany, Austria, France), this paper shows how the concept of structural deficit rules facilitated - at least discursively - the support for discretion-constraining institutions among social democratic and other left-wing parties. In theoretical terms, this study also advances research on the role of ambiguity in political decision-making, (re-)conceptualizing three forms of ambiguity underlying ambiguous consensus: textual ambiguity, institutional ambiguity, and ideational ambiguity. |
| Keywords: | ambiguous consensus,comparative politics,eurozone governance,fiscal rules,ideationa lambiguity,social democratic parties |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:maxpod:204&r=all |
| By: | Budd, John W.; Lamare, J. Ryan |
| Abstract: | Worker voice can relate to political and civic participation in numerous ways. Individual and collective voice can equip individuals with skills and attitudes that increase political engagement, and unions also explicitly encourage members to be politically aware, vote, and run for office. Labor unions and union federations are also often direct participants in the political and policy-making process. This chapter outlines the key theoretical channels by which worker voice can affect political and civic participation, highlights important methodological challenges in identifying causal relationships and mechanisms, and summarizes the major research findings pertaining to nonunion and union voice. In summarizing the major theoretical alternatives, a distinction is made between (a) experiential spillovers in which political and civic participation is facilitated by workers' experience with voice, and (b) intentional efforts by voice institutions, especially labor unions, to increase political and civic participation. In practice, however, the experiential versus intentional transmission mechanisms can be hard to distinguish, so the review of the empirical record is structured around individual-level voice versus collective voice, especially labor unions. Attention is also devoted to the aggregate effects of and participation in the political arena by labor unions. Overall, a broad approach is taken which includes not only classic issues such higher voting rates among union members, but also emerging issues such as whether union members are less likely to vote for extremist parties and the conditions under which labor unions are likely to be influential in the political sphere. |
| Keywords: | worker voice,employee voice,political participation,civic participation,voter turnout |
| JEL: | J51 J54 M54 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:725&r=all |
| By: | Katharina Momsen; Markus Ohndorf |
| Abstract: | We experimentally examine the effect of self-serving information avoidance on democratic and individual decisions in the context of climate change mitigation. Subjects need to choose between two allocations which differ in own payoffs and contributions to carbon offsets. In a between-subjects design, we vary the observability of the offset contribution, as well as the institutional decision context: individual consumption, dictatorship, and majority voting in small and large groups. If information is directly observable, we find robust evidence for expressive voting. However, in cases where information is initially unobservable but revealable without cost, there is no significant difference in selfish decisions between institutional decision contexts. We also find robust evidence for the exploitation of moral wiggle room via self-serving information avoidance in our consumption context, as well as with voting in large groups. Our results indicate that information avoidance effectively substitutes expressive ethical voting as an instrument to manage self-image on the part of the voter. This suggests that moral biases might be less likely in elections than previously thought. |
| Keywords: | Expressive voting, information avoidance, experiment, moral wiggle room, climate change |
| JEL: | C90 D12 D64 D72 D89 Q50 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2020-33&r=all |
| By: | Alger, Ingela; Laslier, Jean-François |
| Abstract: | This paper revisits two classical problems in the theory of voting-viz. the divided majority problem and the strategic revelation of information by majority vote-in the light of evolutionarily founded partial Kantian morality. It is shown that, compared to electorates consisting of purely self-interested voters, such Kantian morality helps voters solve coordination problems and improves the information aggregation properties of equilibria, even for modest levels of morality. |
| Keywords: | voting, Homo moralis, Kantian morality, social dilemmas, divided majority problem, Condorcet jury theorem |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:124951&r=all |
| By: | Konstantin Chatziathanasiou (University of Münster); Svenja Hippel (University of Würzburg); Michael Kurschilgen (Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) |
| Abstract: | The threat of overthrow stabilizes a constitution because it disciplines the elites. This is the main rationale behind rights to resistance. In this paper, we test this conjecture experimentally. We model a society in which players can produce wealth by solving a coordination problem. Coordination is facilitated through a pre-game status-ranking. Compliance with the status hierarchy yields an efficient yet inequitable payoff distribution, in which a player’s wealth is determined by her pre-game status. Between treatments, we vary (a) whether overthrows – which reset the status-ranking via collective disobedience – are possible or not, and (b) whether voluntary redistributive transfers – which high-status players can use to appease the low-status players – are available or not. In contrast to established thinking we find that, on average, the threat of overthrow does not have a stabilizing effect as high-status players fail to provide sufficient redistribution to prevent overthrows. However, if an overthrow brings generous players into high-status positions, groups stabilize and prosper. This suggests an alternative rationale for rights to resistance. |
| Keywords: | rights to resistance; civil resistance; constitutional stability; redistribution; coordination; battle of the sexes; experiment |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D74 H23 P48 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2020_27&r=all |
| By: | Johan A Elkink (School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin); Sarah Parlane (School of Economics, University College Dublin); Thomas Sattler (Universite de Geneve) |
| Abstract: | Most existing studies of referendums examine voter turnout and their vote choice separately. Our theoretical model suggests that this is problematic. The model predicts that voters who generally prefer one of the two possible referendum outcomes, but who are relatively uncertain about the consequences of their preferred option, tend to abstain from voting. Greater uncertainty about a referendum option not only reduces its value, but also, for more "distant" voters, the value of participating. Uncertainty, thus, has a double effect: potential supporters of one referendum option are less likely to vote; and citizens who vote are less likely to support this option. We use data from the ‘Brexit’ vote to show how individual assessments of uncertainty about the two-options affect turnout and the vote. Our empirical analyses provide support for our theoretical model. |
| Keywords: | referendums, turnout, uncertainty, European integration, electoral behavior and Brexit |
| Date: | 2020–11–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucd:wpaper:202012&r=all |
| By: | Mao, Guanlan; Drury, John; Fernandes-Jesus, Maria; Ntontis, Evangelos |
| Abstract: | Mutual aid groups have flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, a major challenge is sustaining such groups, which tend to decline following the initial upsurge immediately after emergencies. The present study investigates one possible motivation for continued participation: the wellbeing benefits associated with psychological membership of groups, as suggested by the ‘social cure’ approach. Interviews were conducted with 11 volunteers in a mutual aid group organised by ACORN, a community union and anti-poverty campaigning organisation. Through qualitative analysis we show that participation provided wellbeing in different ways: positive emotional experiences, increased engagement in life, improved social relationships, and greater sense of control. Participants also reported some negative emotional experiences. Whilst all interviewees experienced benefits from participation, those who viewed their participation through a political lens were able to experience additional benefits such as feelings of empowerment. Moreover, the benefits conferred by a shared political identity appeared to be qualitatively different from the benefits conferred by other forms of shared identity. The interview data is used to hypothesise an overall process by which participants may come to attain a political identity via mutual aid. These findings have implications for how such groups retain their members and how authorities support these groups. |
| Date: | 2020–11–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:x9csf&r=all |
| By: | Angelo Romano (Leiden University); Matthias Sutter (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods); James H. Liu (Massey University, Auckland, NZ); Daniel Balliet (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | Political ideology has been hypothesized to be associated with cooperation and national parochialism (i.e., greater cooperation with members of one’s nation), with liberals thought to have more cooperation with strangers and less national parochialism, compared to conservatives. However, previous findings are limited to few – and predominantly western – nations. Here, we present a large-scale cross-societal experiment that can test hypotheses on the relation between political ideology, cooperation, and national parochialism around the globe. To do so, we recruited 18,411 participants from 42 nations. Participants made decisions in a prisoner’s dilemma game, and we manipulated the nationality of their interaction partner (national ingroup member, national outgroup member, or unidentified stranger). We found that liberals, compared to conservatives, displayed slightly greater cooperation, trust in others, and greater identification with the world as a whole. Conservatives, however, identified more strongly with their own nation and displayed slightly greater national parochialism in cooperation. Importantly, the association between political ideology and behavior was significant in nations characterized by higher wealth, stronger rule of law, and better government effectiveness. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the association between political ideology and cooperation. |
| Keywords: | Cooperation, political ideology, culture, parochial altruism |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2020_28&r=all |
| By: | Giovanni Facchini; Brian Knight; Cecilia Testa |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the relationship between the franchise and law enforcement practices using evidence from the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. We find that, following the VRA, black arrest rates fell in counties that were both covered by the legislation and had a large number of newly enfranchised black voters. We uncover no corresponding patterns for white arrest rates. The reduction in black arrest rates is driven by less serious offenses, for which police might have more enforcement discretion. Importantly, our results are driven by arrests carried out by sheriffs - who are always elected. While there are no corresponding changes for municipal police chiefs in aggregate, we do find similar patterns in covered counties with elected rather than appointed chiefs. We also show that our findings cannot be rationalized by alternative explanations, such as differences in collective bargaining, changes in the underlying propensity to commit crimes, responses to changes in policing practices, and changes in the suppression of civil right protests. Taken together, these results document that voting rights, when combined with elected, rather than appointed, chief law enforcement officers, can lead to improved treatment of minority groups by police. |
| Keywords: | Voting Rights Act, black arrest rates, black voters, elected sheriffs, arrests data, franchise, policing, minority groups |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notnic:2020-09&r=all |
| By: | Shishir Shakya (Department of Economics, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania); Elham Erfanian (Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky); Alexandre R. Scarcioffolo (Department of Economics and Finance, Georgia College & State University) |
| Abstract: | Public choice literature divides the rationality of voting between instrumental and expressive. In this paper, we take the Vermont legislature in passing the H. 57 bill as a case to explain some of the determinants of expressive voting empirically. The H.57 bill declares that no government entity can interfere with, or restrict, a consenting individual’s right to abortion care across the entire gestation period. However, the bill has not changed the previously states quo of the state towards abortion rights. Thus, it creates a situation in which we can analyze the legislator’s voting behavior through the lens of expressive voting framework. We utilize a high dimensional dataset and post-double-selection LASSO method to explain the channels that influence the expressive voting on the H. 57 bill. We web scrape the lower and upper chamber voting data on H.57 bill and use the 2017 American Community Survey 5-year estimates to retrieve 89 different socioeconomic, housing, and demographic characteristics of State Legislative Districts. Our results suggest channels of poverty, gender, and population diversity are some crucial mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | Expressive voting, LASSO, Abortion, Vermont |
| JEL: | D72 D73 |
| Date: | 2020–10–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rri:wpaper:2020wp04&r=all |
| By: | Eguia, Jon (Michigan State University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | I propose a measure of artificial partisan advantage in redistricting. Redistricting is the process of drawing electoral district maps. Electoral outcomes depend on the maps drawn. The measure I propose compares the share of seats won by a party to the share of the population that lives in jurisdictions (counties and towns) won by this party. If a party has a larger share of seats than the share of the population in jurisdictions in which the party won most votes, then the drawing of the electoral maps conferred an artificial advantage to this party. This measure takes into account the geographic sorting of partisan voters and is simple to compute. Using U.S. election data from 2012 to 2018, I find an artificial partisan advantage of seventeen House seats to the Republican party. I argue that the artificial partisan advantage in the congressional maps of North Carolina, Utah, Michigan and Ohio is excessive. |
| Keywords: | Election law; redistricting; gerrymandering; partisan advantage |
| JEL: | D72 K16 |
| Date: | 2020–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:msuecw:2020_014&r=all |
| By: | Santiago Lago-Peñas; Jorge Martinez-Vazquez; Agnese Sacchi |
| Abstract: | The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most powerful examples of negative externalities across the globe. We focus on the role played by institutions at the country level in fighting the spread of Covid-19 by making policy coordination more difficult or, on the contrary, more effective. Specifically, we consider the type of political regimes, political fragmentation and decentralization settings. We use the most recent available information on Covid-19 performance for up to 115 countries around the world. Our main results show that having either democracies or autocracies does not represent a crucial issue for successfully addressing the pandemic. Most significantly, countries with centralized political parties, which fundamentally allow for better coordination at the national level, perform significantly better than those with decentralized ones. However, the assignment of policy responsibilities to sub-national governments is an impediment in fighting the Covid-19 emergency. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19; policy coordination; externalities; decentralization; democratic institutions; political fractionalization. |
| JEL: | H77 |
| Date: | 2020–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gov:wpaper:2001&r=all |
| By: | Bellani, Luna (University of Konstanz); Fabella, Vigile Marie (University of Konstanz); Scervini, Francesco (Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori di Pavia (IUSS)) |
| Abstract: | Policy reforms are often multifaceted. In the rent-seeking literature policies are usually taken as one-dimensional. This paper models policy formation using a political contest with endogenous policy proposals containing two dimensions. The two dimensions provide an opportunity to trade off one policy over another to make the lobbying opposition less aggressive. In a first stage, the Government proposes a reform over the two policies, and in a second stage engages in a contest with an Interest Group over the enactment of the proposed reform. As a result, the Government makes a compromise, under-proposing in the policy the Interest Group opposes and over-proposing in the policy the Interest Group desires. Effectively, there will be strategic bundling of desired policies with undesired ones in an attempt to increase enactment probability and overall utility. |
| Keywords: | contest, political reforms, lobbies |
| JEL: | D72 D86 H4 |
| Date: | 2020–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13924&r=all |
| By: | Demiessie, Habtamu |
| Abstract: | The essence of this study is to map the economic fabric of urban eastern Ethiopian communities. To that end, shared value system in the communities of interest was explored. The whole set of analysis and inferences were meant to hypothesize, conceptualize and/or characterize on key behavioral and institutional variables that defines the economic fabric of a particular society. Core behavioral and institutional variables subjected in this study that construct the group decision making behaviorswere: life style (philosophy of life), rationality of economic agents, life satisfaction, individualistic motives, workmanship traits, consumption and saving behavior. The study is essentially framed based on the principles of hypothetical research. By way of making inferences, techniques/tools from institutional/behavioral economics were borrowed. Moreover, theoretical and empirical evidences from positive psychology,behavioral economics, social economics, economic sociology & social anthropology were employed. The study found out that shared value system in the urban eastern Ethiopian setting manifests as in the followings: a) while making decisions, people often look the matter they supposed to decide in an absolute abstraction. It is customary that people are unwilling to look the pros and cons of their decisions. b) People try to disregard or even mitigate or 'avoid‘ the negative outcomes of their actions (decisions). The study inferred that the shared value system is a social construct meant to cope up from uncertainties arising out of uncertain (risky) nature of prevailing fabric of life, which is a typical feature of urban eastern Ethiopia. Furthermore, the study explained and/or hypothesized on how those behavioral elements are interpreted into wellbeing of people. More importantly, the behavioral/institutional modeling made can be used to understand the fabrics of collective/communal societies in general. Therefore, academic and research circles are expected to give due emphasis to probing why/how the prevailing shared values/institutional system would be progressive or retrogressive to wellbeing of people and communities of interest of the study. Moreover, policy regimes should consider those variables their concern, where interventions in this regard are expected to overcome retrogressive behavioral and institutional elements and nurture those which are progressive to wellbeing. |
| Keywords: | Eastern Ethiopian Communities Group Decision Making Behavior Involuntary Simplicity Wellbeing |
| JEL: | B5 B52 H3 J5 Z1 |
| Date: | 2020–11–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:104231&r=all |
| By: | Niklas Potrafke; Kaspar Wüthrich |
| Abstract: | We examine how Green governments influence macroeconomic, education, and environmental outcomes. Our empirical strategy exploits that the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan gave rise to an unanticipated change in government in the German state Baden-Wuerttemberg in 2011. The incumbent rightwing government was replaced by a leftwing government led by the Green party. We use the synthetic control method to select control states against which Baden-Wuerttemberg’s outcomes can be compared. The results do not suggest that the Green government influenced macroeconomic outcomes. The Green government implemented education policies that caused comprehensive schools to become larger. We find no evidence that the Green government influenced CO2 emissions, particulate matter emissions, or increased energy usage from renewable energies overall. An intriguing result is that the share of wind power usage decreased relative to the estimated counterfactual. Intra-ecological conflicts and realities in public office are likely to have prevented the Green government from implementing drastic policy changes. |
| Keywords: | Green governments, partisan politics, synthetic control method, causal effects, Fukushima nuclear disaster, environmental policies, energy policies, renewable energies, comprehensive schools |
| JEL: | C33 D72 E65 H70 I21 Q48 Q58 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8726&r=all |
| By: | Kai A. Konrad; Florian Morath |
| Abstract: | We study the long-run stochastic stability properties of volunteering strategies in finite populations. We allow for mixed strategies, characterized by the probability that a player may not volunteer. A pairwise comparison of evolutionary strategies shows that the strategy with a lower probability of volunteering is advantaged. However, in the long run there are also groups of volunteering types. Homomorphisms with the more volunteering types are more frequent if the groups have fewer members, and if the benefits from volunteering are larger. Such homomorphisms with volunteering cease to exist if the group becomes infinitely large. In contrast, the disadvantage of volunteering disappears if the ratio of individual benefits and costs of volunteering becomes infinitely large. |
| Keywords: | Volunteering, stochastic stability, finite populations, mixed strategies, collective action |
| JEL: | C73 D62 H41 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2020-34&r=all |