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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Hortala-Vallve, Rafael; Meriläinen, Jaakko; Tukiainen, Janne |
| Abstract: | Pre-electoral coalitions (PECs) may increase parties’ chances of winning an election, but they may also distort electoral results and policies away from citizens’ preferences. To shed light on how PECs shape post-electoral power distribution, we study the causes and consequences of PECs in Finland where elections use an open-list proportional representation system, and parties may form joint lists. We present descriptive evidence showing that PECs are more common between parties of equal size and similar ideology, and when elections are more disproportional or involve more parties. Using difference-in-differences and density discontinuity designs, we illustrate that voters punish coalescing parties and target personal votes strategically within the coalitions, and that PECs are formed with the particular purpose of influencing the distribution of power. PECs increase small parties’ chances of acquiring leadership positions, lead to more dispersed seat distributions, and sometimes prevent absolute majorities. They can thus enable a broader representation of citizens’ policy preferences. |
| Keywords: | coalition formation; local elections; multi-party systems; open-list proportional representation; pre-electoral coalitions |
| JEL: | D72 P00 |
| Date: | 2024–01–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:121600 |
| By: | Hans Gersbach; Rodrigo Casado Noguerales; Samuel Schenk |
| Abstract: | When a counter-proposal is made to an initiative to change the Swiss constitution, the citizenry makes three binary majority choices: the initiative versus the status quo, the initiative versus the counter-proposal, and the status quo versus the counterproposal as a tie-breaker. If there is a cycle, the alternative that beats the status-quo wins. This system invites strategic voting, as exemplified by the 2010 case of the “Ausschaffungsinitiative”. We suggest to break cycles differently by choosing the middle alternative in case of a cycle, which will normally be the counter-proposal. More precisely, we show that there always exists a strong Nash equilibrium in which all citizens vote sincerely. Moreover, the outcome of all alternative strong equilibria with strategic voting is the same as if everybody votes sincerely. We also show that other common cycle-breaker rules cannot achieve the same result. |
| Keywords: | Swiss democracy, three-way referendum, Condorcet Winner, manipulation, information sharing, initiative |
| JEL: | C72 D70 D72 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11265 |
| By: | Despina Gavresi (DEM, University of Luxembourg); Anastasia Litina (Department of Economics, University of Macedonia) |
| Abstract: | This paper establishes population aging as a driving force of populism in a multilevel regression analysis of individuals living in European countries over the period 2002-2019. The focus is on the effect of ``aggregate'' population aging as opposed to individual aging. Populism expressed as populist attitudes is measured with individual-level data of nine consecutive rounds of the European Social Survey. We use data on voting for populist parties, political trust, and attitudes towards immigration. Our findings suggest an association of population aging with a declining electoral turnout, a higher support for populist parties, lower trust in political institutions, and a rise in anti-immigrant hostility. These effects are observed across both young and elderly voters. |
| Keywords: | Population Aging, Populist Voting, Immigrant Attitudes, Trust |
| JEL: | D72 J10 P00 Z13 |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mcd:mcddps:2024_07 |
| By: | Leonardo Matone; Ben Abramowitz; Nicholas Mattei; Avinash Balakrishnan |
| Abstract: | Aggregating the preferences of multiple agents into a collective decision is a common step in many important problems across areas of computer science including information retrieval, reinforcement learning, and recommender systems. As Social Choice Theory has shown, the problem of designing algorithms for aggregation rules with specific properties (axioms) can be difficult, or provably impossible in some cases. Instead of designing algorithms by hand, one can learn aggregation rules, particularly voting rules, from data. However, the prior work in this area has required extremely large models, or been limited by the choice of preference representation, i.e., embedding. We recast the problem of designing a good voting rule into one of learning probabilistic versions of voting rules that output distributions over a set of candidates. Specifically, we use neural networks to learn probabilistic social choice functions from the literature. We show that embeddings of preference profiles derived from the social choice literature allows us to learn existing voting rules more efficiently and scale to larger populations of voters more easily than other work if the embedding is tailored to the learning objective. Moreover, we show that rules learned using embeddings can be tweaked to create novel voting rules with improved axiomatic properties. Namely, we show that existing voting rules require only minor modification to combat a probabilistic version of the No Show Paradox. |
| Date: | 2024–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2408.13630 |
| By: | FUJITANI, Ryosuke; ITO, Akitoshi; IWATA, Kiyonori |
| Abstract: | This study examines how sub-communities of institutional investors (‘cliques’) play a governance role through their coordinated engagement via-à-vis Japanese firms. Based on the five-percent ownership threshold for defining a link in the investor network, we identify several cliques among institutional investors investing in Japanese firms. We show that the largest clique of each firm votes on behalf of shareholder’s value at shareholder meetings. We also find that institutional investors in the same clique vote in the same direction more frequently than institutions which do not belong to the same clique. These findings suggest that institutional investors coordinate their voting behaviors to enhance value-increasing managerial decisions. |
| Date: | 2024–08–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hmicwp:253 |
| By: | Bharti Nandwani (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research); Punarjit Roychowdhury (Shiv Nadar University) |
| Abstract: | The paper examines whether granting property inheritance rights to females improves their participation in politics as election candidates in India. Conservative gender norms in patriarchal societies like India discourage women from actively participating in politics, with socially enforced sanctions for non-compliance. Additionally, being politically active is costly, requiring significant contributions of time and resources. Improvement in property rights is likely to financially empower women, easing both the constraints. Using state-level variation in legal changes to women's property rights and employing a large administrative data on elections in India, we show that better property rights for women lead to an increase in women contesting for elections and likelihood of winning for women candidates. We also document that regional parties contest more female candidates and there is increased entry of new female candidates after the reform. Further, using a large household survey data, we provide evidence that the increased political participation is driven by improved financial autonomy of women after the inheritance reforms. We confirm that pre-existing trends are not confounding our results. |
| Keywords: | Gender, India, Female Political Participation, Property Rights |
| JEL: | J16 D72 K11 O12 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2024-012 |
| By: | Guinaudeau, Benjamin; Jankowski, Michael |
| Abstract: | When do populist radical-right parties (PRRP) foster the (descriptive) representation of women? In a recently published paper, Weeks et al. (2023) coin the concept of 'strategic descriptive representation'. When facing electoral struggles, PRRP would exploit the existing gender gap and strategically increase the descriptive representation of women to attract female votes and fare better in the election. Using data on 58 elections across 19 countries, the authors test their argument and find conclusive evidence supporting it. In this paper, we offer a replication of the study. First, we assess the numerical reproducibility of the published findings ('verification'). Second, we investigate the 'robustness' of the findings and evaluate the results under alternative model specifications. While our replication study identifies minor issues with the verification and some of themodel specifications, itmost importantly shows that the main results of the paper are driven by a single outlier. The paper's key finding is hence contingent on the inclusion of a single observation (French Front National in 2012), which is a questionable observation as it only elected two MPs, one of whom was a woman. Additionally, this woman's election was seemingly caused by a combination of idiosyncratic factors discussed in the study. Once the case is excluded from the analysis the key model parameter shrinks close to zero and loses its statistical significance. Accordingly, in light of our findings, there is no clear evidence supporting strategic descriptive representation and electoral pressures do not seem sufficient to encourage PRRP to increase their share of female representatives. Correcting this empirical finding has important implications for both understanding PRRP's electoral strategies and women's representation. |
| Keywords: | descriptive representation, women, populist radical-right, replication, robustness, small-N studies |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:149 |