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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Boffa Federico (Faculty of Economics and Management, Free University of Bozen/Bolzano and Collegio Carlo Alberto, Italy;); Mollisi Vincenzo (Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, University of Torino, Torino, Italy;); Ponzetto A. M. Giacomo (CREI, UPF, IPEG and BSE, Spain;) |
| Abstract: | Poor performance by the established political class can drive voters towards anti- establishment outsiders. Is the ineffectiveness of incumbent politicians an important driver of the recent rise of populist parties? We provide an empirical test exploiting a sharp discontinuity in the wage of local politicians as a function of population in Italian municipalities. We find that the more skilled local politicians and more effective local government in municipalities above the threshold cause a significant drop in voter support for the populist Five-Star Movement in regional and national elections. Support for incumbent governing parties increases instead. |
| Keywords: | Populism, Government efficiency, Politician quality, Political agency. |
| JEL: | D72 D73 H70 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tur:wpapnw:087&r=cdm |
| By: | Pranab Bardhan; Sandip Mitra; Dilip Mookherjee; Anusha Nath |
| Abstract: | Using rural household survey data from West Bengal, we find that voters respond positively to excludable government welfare benefits but not to local public good programs, while reporting having benefited from both. Consistent with these voting patterns, shocks to electoral competition induced by exogenous redistricting of villages resulted in upper-tier governments manipulating allocations across local governments only for excludable benefit programs. Using a hierarchical budgeting model, we argue these results provide credible evidence of the presence of clientelism rather than programmatic politics. |
| JEL: | H40 H75 H76 O10 P48 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32158&r=cdm |
| By: | Joshua C. Yang; Marcin Korecki; Damian Dailisan; Carina I. Hausladen; Dirk Helbing |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the voting behaviors of Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly OpenAI's GPT4 and LLaMA2, and their alignment with human voting patterns. Our approach included a human voting experiment to establish a baseline for human preferences and a parallel experiment with LLM agents. The study focused on both collective outcomes and individual preferences, revealing differences in decision-making and inherent biases between humans and LLMs. We observed a trade-off between preference diversity and alignment in LLMs, with a tendency towards more uniform choices as compared to the diverse preferences of human voters. This finding indicates that LLMs could lead to more homogenized collective outcomes when used in voting assistance, underscoring the need for cautious integration of LLMs into democratic processes. |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2402.01766&r=cdm |
| By: | Guiso, L.; Herrera, H.; Morelli, M.; Sonno, Tommaso |
| Abstract: | We document the spiral of populism in Europe and the direct and indirect role of economic insecurity shocks. Using survey data on individual voting, we make two contributions to the literature. (i) Economic insecurity shocks have a significant impact on the populist vote share, directly as demand for protection, and indirectly through the induced changes in trust and attitudes. (ii) A key consequence of increased economic insecurity is a drop in turnout. The impact of this largely neglected turnout effect is substantial: conditional on voting, when economic insecurity increases, almost 40% of the induced change in the vote for a populist party comes from the turnout channel. |
| Keywords: | 694583 |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2024–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:122069&r=cdm |
| By: | Jacob, Marc S.; Lee, Barton E.; Gratton, Gabriele |
| Abstract: | We propose a mechanism linking legislative gridlock to voters' support for candidates who hold extreme policy positions. Moderate voters rationally discount extreme policy proposals from co-partisans on gridlocked policy issues because on these issues policy change is unlikely. We test our mechanism in a large-scale online experiment in which we randomly vary subjects' perceptions of gridlock and measure subjects' support for co-partisan candidates in candidate-choice tasks. We verify that greater perception of gridlock on a specific issue increases moderate subjects' propensity to vote for extreme co-partisan candidates on the gridlocked issue. We show that our experimental evidence is consistent with our mechanism and that other mechanisms are less likely to underlie our main result. Our theory offers a causal connection from gridlock to elite polarization that may inform further empirical work and suggests a novel tradeoff between elite polarization and policy stability in constitutional design. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cbscwp:283894&r=cdm |
| By: | Andrea Bernini; Giovanni Facchini; Marco Tabellini; Cecilia Testa |
| Abstract: | We review the literature on the effects of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which removed formal restrictions to Black political participation. After a brief description of racial discrimination suffered by Black Americans since Reconstruction, we introduce the goals that the VRA was meant to achieve. Next, we discuss the local level impact of the law on political participation and representation, on public goods provision and policing practices, and on labor market outcomes. We then turn to whites’ reactions, from political realignment to electoral counter-mobilization to changes in voting rules and arrests patterns. We conclude by discussing how the evidence reviewed in this article can inform policy-making and the design of legislation aimed at reducing racial discrimination and inequality. |
| Date: | 2024–02–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:1035&r=cdm |
| By: | Anton E. Bobrov; Rupal Kamdar; Mauricio Ulate |
| Abstract: | U.S. monetary-policy decisions are made by the 12 voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Seven of these members, coming from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, inherently represent national-level interests. The remaining five members, a rotating group of presidents from the 12 Federal Reserve districts, come instead from sub-national jurisdictions. Does this structure have relevant implications for the monetary policy-making process? In this paper, we first build a panel dataset on economic activity across Fed districts. We then provide evidence that regional economic conditions influence the voting behavior of district presidents. Specifically, a regional unemployment rate that is one percentage point higher than the U.S. level is associated with an approximately nine percentage points higher probability of dissenting in favor of looser policy at the FOMC. This result is statistically significant, robust to different specifications, and indicates that the regional component in the structure of the FOMC could matter for monetary policy. |
| Keywords: | monetary policy; Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC); regional economics; Taylor Rule |
| JEL: | E32 E52 E58 E61 |
| Date: | 2024–02–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedfwp:97860&r=cdm |
| By: | Bolgherini Silvia (Department of Political Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy;); Mollisi Vincenzo (Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, University of Torino, Torino, Italy;) |
| Abstract: | Evidence on the electoral participation at the municipal level usually points to a detrimental effect of an enlarged size (due to amalgamation) at the following municipal elections. Contrary to previous studies, our results show an overall positive effect of amalgamation on municipal turnout: larger units do not necessarily vote less than smaller ones. In a quasi-experimental Difference-in-difference design following Callaway and Sant'Anna (2020), we find that the final municipal size per se does not explain turnout after amalgamation. Hence the traditional claim that a larger size should depress municipal turnout does not always hold. Cross- and within municipal heterogeneity emerges instead as a crucial lens for explaining such evidence. In particular, municipalities with higher dissent towards amalgamation show higher turnouts at the following municipal election. This article is the first study relative to Southern Europe and considers all municipalities merged between 2013 and 2019 in Italy. |
| Keywords: | Municipal amalgamations, Turnout, Local institutions' Size, Referendum, Consent/dissent, Political efficacy, Difference-in-Difference |
| JEL: | H7 H70 H77 D7 D72 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tur:wpapnw:091&r=cdm |
| By: | Bühler Mathias (LMU Munich); Andrew Dickens (Brock University) |
| Abstract: | We document the importance of local information in mass media for the political engagement of citizens and accountability of politicians. We study this in the context of Canada, where until 1958, competition in television markets was suppressed—Canadians received either public or private television content, but never both. While public television provided national-level informational content, private television content was distinctly local and more politically relevant to voters. We find that the introduction of television reduced voter turnout, but that this effect is exclusive to public television districts. Our findings qualify existing knowledge about the political effects of the rollout of new media, by allowing the informational content to vary while holding the media type constant. We support this argument with evidence from parliamentary debates: politicians from districts with private television are more likely to speak and act on behalf of their constituents in Parliament. Our findings thus suggest that politicians are held accountable by relevant media content. |
| JEL: | D72 L82 N42 |
| Date: | 2024–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:496&r=cdm |