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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Ratul Das Chaudhury; C. Matthew Leister; Birendra Rai |
| Abstract: | When can an interest group exploit ideological and affective polarization between political parties to its advantage? We study a model where an interest group credibly promises payments to legislators conditional on voting for its favored policy. Legislators value voting as their friends within their party, and suffer an ideological-disutility upon voting against their party's ideologically preferred policy. Affective polarization, owing to its interpersonal nature, is modeled by assuming a legislator values distinguishing her voting decision from legislators in the opposite party. Our main finding is that an aggregate measure of relative cohesiveness of social networks in the two parties determines whether the interest group can profitably exploit increasing polarization. However, the significance of relative cohesiveness vanishes if there is no ideological polarization between the two parties. |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2205.07486&r= |
| By: | Elsa Leromain; Gonzague Vannoorenberghe |
| Abstract: | We study how Covid-related risk affected participation across the French territory in the March 2020 local elections. We document that participation went down disproportionately in towns exposed to higher Covid-19 risk. Towns that lean towards the far-right saw a stronger drop in turnout, in particular in the vicinity of clusters. We argue that these patterns are partly a result of risk perceptions, and not only of political considerations. We use data on the drop in cinema admissions in early March 2020 and show that these went down more around infection clusters, especially in areas with substantial vote for the far-right. Taken together, our findings suggest that the fear of Covid-19 may have been on average more prevalent among far-right voters, contributing to a drop in their electoral participation. |
| Keywords: | electoral turnout, local elections, Covid-19, far-right |
| Date: | 2021–07–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1786&r= |
| By: | Diana Van Patten; Esteban Méndez |
| Abstract: | We exploit a natural experiment to study the extent to which popular attitudes toward trade are driven by economic fundamentals. In 2007, Costa Rica put a free trade agreement (FTA) to a national referendum. With a single question on the ballot, 59% of Costa Rican adult citizens cast a vote on whether they wanted an FTA with the United States to be ratified, or not. We merge disaggregated referendum results with employer-employee data, customs and balance-sheet data, firm-to-firm transactions data, and data on household composition and expenditures. We document that a firm's exposure to the FTA, directly and via input-output linkages, significantly influences the voting behavior of its employees. This effect is greater for voters who are aligned with pro-FTA political candidates. We find that import competition plays a role in explaining votes against openness, and that within-industry heterogeneity is key in explaining votes, as compared with sector-level exposure. We also show that citizens considered the expected decrease in consumer prices when exercising their vote. |
| JEL: | D72 F13 F14 F68 O24 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30058&r= |
| By: | Julia Bredtmann |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the effects of local exposure to refugees on electoral outcomes in the 2016 state election in Germany. Based on quasi-random variation in the allocation of refugees across municipalities and unique data on refugee populations and their type of accommodation, I find that an increase in the population share of refugees increases the vote share of right-wing parties and decreases the vote share of the incumbent federal government parties. The electoral effects, however, are solely driven by refugees living in centralized accommodation, while no such effects are found for refugees living in decentralized accommodation. These findings have important implications for the design of public policies in handling future receptions of refugees, as they reveal that an earlier transfer of refugees from centralized to decentralized accommodation could attenuate a growing support for right-wing parties. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, refugees, political economy, voting |
| JEL: | D72 F22 J15 R23 |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2213&r= |
| By: | Saish Nevrekar |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the problem of endogenous coalition formation in contests: how players organize themselves in groups when faced with the common objective of securing a prize by exerting costly effort. The model presented adopts an axiomatic approach by assuming certain properties for the winning probability that imply efficiency gains from cooperation in contest settings. Efficiency gains are said to be generated if any coalition experiences increasing marginal returns with aggregate effort until a threshold. These properties identify a wide class of generalised Tullock contest success functions. We analyse a sequential coalition formation game for an arbitrary number of symmetric players and exogenous effort. If coalitions generate sufficient efficiency gains, then any equilibrium always consists of two or more coalitions where at least two coalitions are of unequal size. This result extends to endogenous efforts if the cost functions are sufficiently convex. |
| Keywords: | Noncooperative games, coalition formation, contest success function |
| JEL: | C72 D74 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:412&r= |
| By: | Berliant, Marcus; Gouveia, Miguel |
| Abstract: | The literatures dealing with voting, optimal income taxation, implementation, and pure public goods are drawn on here to address the problem of voting over income taxes and a public good. In contrast with previous articles, general nonlinear income taxes that affect the labor-leisure decisions of consumers who work and vote are allowed. Uncertainty plays an important role in that the government does not know the true realizations of the abilities of consumers drawn from a known distribution, but must meet the realization-dependent budget; the tax system must be robust. Even though the space of alternatives is infinite dimensional, conditions on primitives are found to assure existence of a majority rule equilibrium when agents vote over both a public good and income taxes to finance it. |
| Keywords: | Voting; Income taxation; Public good; Robustness |
| JEL: | D72 D82 H21 H41 |
| Date: | 2022–05–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:113140&r= |
| By: | Laurent Bouton; Julia Cagé; Edgard Dewitte; Vincent Pons |
| Abstract: | We study the characteristics and behavior of small campaign donors and compare them to large donors by building a dataset including all the 340 million individual contributions reported to the U.S. Federal Election Commission between 2005 and 2020. Thanks to the reporting requirements of online fundraising platforms first used by Democrats (ActBlue) and now Republicans (WinRed), we observe contribution-level information on the vast majority of small donations. We first show that the number of small donors (donors who do not give more than $200 to any committee during a two-year electoral cycle) and their total contributions have been growing rapidly. Second, small donors include more women and more ethnic minorities than large donors, but their geographical distribution does not differ much. Third, using a saturated fixed effects model, we find that race closeness, candidate ideological extremeness, whether candidates and donors live in the same district or state, and whether they have the same ethnicity increase contributions, with lower effects for small donors. Finally, we show that campaign TV ads affect the number and size of contributions to congressional candidates, particularly for small donors, indicating that pull factors are relevant to explain their behavior. |
| JEL: | D72 M37 P16 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30050&r= |
| By: | Averbukh, Lidia |
| Abstract: | In the run-up to the 2021 elections to the Knesset, Jewish parties are actively courting the votes of Israeli Arabs, who constitute 17 per cent of all Israelis eligible to vote. At the same time, Israeli Arabs are increasingly emphasizing the need for a politics that will help improve their living circumstances and allow them greater political participation. While the Joint List alliance of Arab parties continues to follow its traditional oppositionist course and has come to terms with the decision of one of its members, the Islamic Movement (Ra'am), to split away, the election campaign has seen the emergence of new Arab politics, whose actors advocate a more pragmatic approach and are looking to cooperate with Jewish parties. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the identity of the Jewish state of Israel are playing a secondary role. The situation is similar in Israeli local politics, where Jews and Arabs are already engaged in interest-based cooperation. |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:182021&r= |
| By: | Bossong, Raphael |
| Abstract: | In the run-up to the 2021 elections to the Knesset, Jewish parties are actively courting the votes of Israeli Arabs, who constitute 17 per cent of all Israelis eligible to vote. At the same time, Israeli Arabs are increasingly emphasizing the need for a politics that will help improve their living circumstances and allow them greater political participation. While the Joint List alliance of Arab parties continues to follow its traditional oppositionist course and has come to terms with the decision of one of its members, the Islamic Movement (Ra'am), to split away, the election campaign has seen the emergence of new Arab politics, whose actors advocate a more pragmatic approach and are looking to cooperate with Jewish parties. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the identity of the Jewish state of Israel are playing a secondary role. The situation is similar in Israeli local politics, where Jews and Arabs are already engaged in interest-based cooperation. |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:202021&r= |
| By: | Pia Schilling; Steven Stillman |
| Abstract: | Exploiting the random allocation of asylum seekers to different locations in Germany, we study the impact of right-wing voting on refugees’ integration. We find that in municipalities with more voting for the right-wing AfD, refugees have worse economic and social integration. These impacts are largest for groups targeted by AfD campaigns and refugees are also more likely to suffer from harassment and right-wing attacks in areas with greater AfD support. Positive interactions with locals are also less likely and negative opinions about immigration spillover to supporters of other parties in these areas. On the other hand, stronger support for pro-immigrant parties enhances social integration. |
| Keywords: | Immigrants’ integration, refugees, hostile attitudes, voting behavior |
| JEL: | J15 J61 Z13 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp1166&r= |
| By: | Marina Azzimonti; Laura Karpuska; Gabriel Mihalache |
| Abstract: | Entitlement programs have become an increasing component of total government spending in the US over the last six decades. To some observers, this growth of the welfare state is excessive and unwarranted. To others, it is a welcome counter-acting force to the rapid increase in income inequality. Using a political-economy model where parties bargain over taxes and entitlements, we argue that such dynamics can be explained by two factors. The first one is that institutional features of policy determination, in particular budget rules, make the status quo levels of taxes and entitlements difficult to change. The second one is that the country experienced a process of “unequal growth,” where top earners became richer while the income levels of the bottom 50 percent remained stagnant. Richer agents would like the government to provide more public goods as the economy grows. Low-income earners are willing to support such policies only in exchange for an expansion of entitlement programs. Sustained bargaining power by a party that represents the latter, amid budget rules, results in a rising share of entitlements. We explain how parties can take advantage of budget rules to tilt the evolution of policy in their favor in a simple two-period model. We then calibrate an infinite horizon version of the model to the US, and show that it delivers dynamics consistent with the data. Through counter-factual experiments, we find that while entitlements programs are sub-optimally large, welfare outcomes are better than those under alternative budget rules and in scenarios without rules, making it explicit that the type of budget rule matters for both welfare and equity. |
| JEL: | C7 D6 E6 H2 H23 H3 H41 H53 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30044&r= |
| By: | Zilla, Claudia |
| Abstract: | On 19 December 2021, Gabriel Boric won the run-off of the Chilean presidential election with 55.9 percent of votes, 11.8 percentage points ahead of José Antonio Kast. That day voter participation in Chile reached a historic high (55.6 percent) since the abolition of mandatory voting. This great mobilisation helped Boric - who had finished second in the first round - to victory. The newly elected president therefore has a solid democratic foundation, but Chileans have also invested great hopes in him. Furthermore, the new head of government will have to contend with the tensions between two institutions: a Constitutional Convention and a Congress that is divided along party lines. His four-year mandate, starting on 11 March, could be both the last under the 'Pinochet Constitution' and the start of a democratic transformation. |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:182022&r= |