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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Jon H. Fiva; Oda Nedregård |
| Abstract: | How important are political parties in motivating and disciplining elected officials? Using a difference-in-discontinuity design, we study how shocks to incumbents’ re-election probabilities affect legislative behavior in a setting where parties fully control candidate selection. We find that within-session variation in lame-duck status has a strong negative effect on the probability of showing up in parliament to vote. We find, however, no clear evidence that lame-duck status affects the extent to which legislators deviate from the party line. Our findings align well with the citizen-candidate framework, where candidates have fixed ideological positions that do not vary based on electoral incentives. |
| Keywords: | political parties, party discipline, roll-call votes, legislative speech, difference-in-discontinuity design |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9697&r= |
| By: | Rumilda Cañete (Independent Researcher); Josepa Miquel-Florensa (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Stéphane Straub (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Karine van der Straeten (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that giving voters more power both formally through the use of more "open" electoral systems and informally through easier access to information on politicians' wrongdoings will necessarily result in them voting corrupt politicians out of office. Focusing on a comparison between closed-list and open-list proportional representation systems, we theoretically show that opening the lists is likely to generate a large shift of vote shares in favor of the traditional, most corrupt parties. We design a survey experiment to test these predictions in Paraguay and nd strong supporting evidence. We do not nd in our context that the lack of information is a major obstacle preventing voters from voting out corrupt politicians; if anything, under the more open system, supporters of the incumbent party tend to cast more votes for politicians with a recent history of corruption. |
| Keywords: | Corruption,Electoral systems,Information |
| Date: | 2022–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629643&r= |
| By: | Eric Kamwa (LC2S - Laboratoire caribéen de sciences sociales - UA - Université des Antilles - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | A voting rule that permits some voters to favor a candidate by providing only the initial segment of their sincere rankings is said to be vulnerable to the truncation paradox. In this paper, we consider four models for counting truncated ballots, optimistic, pessimistic (the most common), averaged, and round-down. Under the impartial anonymous culture assumption, the choice of model generally has a real impact on truncation-paradox vulnerability, but there are exceptions. When the election is decided by a one-shot scoring rule, the optimistic model is invulnerable to the truncation paradox, but all other models are vulnerable. We identify new voting rules immune to the truncation paradox, such as the Modified Borda Count. To obtain a more complete picture of the impact of processing model, we assess the likelihood of the truncation paradox in three-candidate elections with large electorates, focusing not only on oneshot scoring rules but also scoring rules with one-by-one or below-average elimination. Our assessment confirms that the processing model for truncated ballots may really matter. |
| Keywords: | Impartial and Anonymous Culture.,Paradox,Probability,Scoring model,Rankings,Truncation |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03632662&r= |
| By: | Victor Ginsburgh; Juan D. Moreno-Ternero |
| Abstract: | We analyze and evaluate the rules and results at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest. We first concentrate on the various voting procedures, and explore several alternatives (inspired by classical contributions in social choice and game theory) that could make a difference for the results. We also discuss other important issues, such as simplicity, contrast effects and whether experts are better judges than tele-voters. Our findings raise the question of whether the voting procedures used by the Eurovision Song Contest authorities are fail-safe. We endorse instead the use of the so-called Shapley voting procedure for judges as well as tele-voters. |
| Keywords: | Eurovision Song Contest, Voting, Borda, Shapley Method, Biases |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/342358&r= |
| By: | Charlotte Cavaillé (University of Michigan [Dearborn] - University of Michigan System); Daniel L. Chen (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Karine van der Straeten (TSE - Toulouse School of Economics - UT1 - Université Toulouse 1 Capitole - Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Many questions in political science require knowing not only what voters want (pref-erence orientation) but also how much they want it (preference intensity). In this paper, we assess two methods for measuring individual differences in preference intensity. One method — issue importance items — asks respondents to self-report how important a given set of policy proposals is to them personally. Another — Quadratic Voting for Survey Research (QVSR) — gives respondents a fixed budget to ‘buy' votes in favor of (against) these policy proposals, with the price for each vote increasing quadratically. We provide theoretical arguments explaining why, in a polarized environment where some respondents may feel pressured to pay lip service to the party norms, one should expect QVSR to offer a better measure of preference intensity. Using Likert items as the benchmark, we find that QVSR more consistently differentiates between intense and weak preferences, as proxied by respondents' behavior on simplified real-world tasks. Revisiting debates on the determinants of policy preferences, or the congruence between mass opinions and the policy status quo, we show that conclusions reached when using Likert items alone change once differences in preference intensity are bet-ter accounted for. |
| Date: | 2022–03–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03624597&r= |