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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Qin, Ruilang (Warwick University) |
| Abstract: | Political polarisation has become a prevalent phenomenon in the past decades. Parallelly, citizens have increasingly resorted to collective actions to demand change, resulting in incidents such as the Jan 6 US Capitol riot. Evidence suggests that such public remonstrations exacerbated the extent of opinion divergence. This paper therefore presents a model that explains the dynamic connection between political polarisation and collective actions. In the setup, voting, abstention, and participation in collective actions are novelly modelled as individual components of a citizen’s political toolkit. With endogenous voter preferences alone, polarisation has an exacerbating but limited effect on the level of collective actions. In turn, collective actions accelerate the process of polarisation for the election-losing partisans, creating asymmetry in the voter distribution. It is only when combined with strategic behaviour of the parties that polarisation may lead to substantially intensified collective actions. |
| Keywords: | political polarisation ; collective actions ; electoral contest JEL classifications: D72 ; D74 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:wrkesp:77 |
| By: | S. Nageeb Ali; Maximilian Mihm; Lucas Siga |
| Abstract: | This paper offers a strategic rationale for zero-sum thinking in elections. We show that asymmetric information and distributional considerations together make voters wary of policies supported by others. This force impels a majority of voters to support policies contrary to their preferences and information. Our analysis identifies and interprets a form of "adverse correlation" that is necessary and sufficient for zero-sum thinking to prevail in equilibrium. |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2409.15946 |
| By: | Straus, Graham |
| Abstract: | Is local politics shaped by groups and interests or party and ideology? Classic literature posits that local politics differs from national politics and centers on groups and interests rather than ideology, especially in settings with nonpartisan elections. A separate literature casts doubt on this, finding a connection between partisan voting, local ideology, and policy mimicking the federal level and without reference to groups and interests. In this paper, I use a large original dataset on the professional backgrounds of city councilors to provide a link between the evidence for both theories. I look at city council candidates from all 477 cities in California between 1996 and 2021, observing both candidates’ career histories through their ballot designations and party affiliations through their public voter records. I find that liberal cities have more career politicians, non-profit workers, and service based professionals running for and holding office, while conservative cities have more military and law enforcement workers and business types running for and holding office. Career politicians, non-profit workers, and service based professionals are more likely to be registered as Democrats and military and law enforcement workers and business types are more likely to be registered Republicans. In this case group membership and party affiliation are tightly coupled. |
| Date: | 2024–09–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:38evc |
| By: | Thakur, Dhanaraj; Finkel, Müge |
| Abstract: | Women, and women of color in particular, face numerous challenges when running for political office in the U.S. These include attacks they are subject to in various online spaces that, like their peers, they must use to campaign and promote their work. These attacks often aim to undermine and prevent women’s participation in politics. These forms of abuse might contribute to the underrepresentation of women of color in politics, and may also undermine the effectiveness of the US democratic system in reflecting the interest and priorities of all voters in policy-making. In this research brief, we turn to the 2024 U.S. elections to examine the nature of offensive speech and hate speech that candidates running for Congress are subject to on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which remains an important forum for political candidates. More specifically, we compare the levels of offensive speech and hate speech that different groups of Congressional candidates are targeted with based on race and gender, with a particular emphasis on women of color. We also examine these factors for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris as a woman of color and presidential candidate. |
| Date: | 2024–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:d78zk |
| By: | McDonald, Jared (University of Maryland); Safarpour, Alauna (Gettysburg College); Hanmer, Michael J.; Bryant, Lisa A. |
| Abstract: | Election integrity is paramount in a healthy democracy. The American system places the responsibility of essential election administration functions, such as cleaning lists of registered voters as people change addresses, move across state lines, or pass away, with state and local officials. To overcome this collective action problem, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was created as a collaboration between states, whereby members share administrative data to ensure clean voter registration lists and encourage individuals who are eligible but unregistered (EBUs) to register to vote. Through experiments in partnership with ERIC member states, researchers found that contact from state officials increased registration and turnout among EBUs. Despite ERIC’s primary focus on maintaining the accuracy of voter rolls, it was criticized in early 2022 by conservatives, who accused it of being a tool for partisan electioneering. In the aftermath of this criticism, nine Republican-led states left ERIC, prompting concerns that this would make election administration more difficult. We assess the validity of these attacks and provide strong evidence that contributes to the debate about whether mobilizing the unregistered population produces partisan advantage. By leveraging field experiments conducted by ERIC member states during the 2016 election in Pennsylvania and Nevada (two important swing states), we find that ERIC’s efforts had little differential effect on party registration or turnout. We discuss the importance of efforts to provide states with tools to maintain clean voter rolls and to connect with eligible, but hard-to-reach potential voters who often get ignored by campaigns. |
| Date: | 2024–09–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:7wr8q |
| By: | David Desmarchelier (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Thomas Lanzi (BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes to adapt a simple disease spread model for political persuasion. More precisely, we observe how a policy presented by a leader prevails in a committee divided into two groups: supporters and opponents. At each date, agents from the two groups meet and influence each other due to the leader's persuasion force. If the leader's persuasion force dominates (is dominated), then some opponents (supporters) become supporters (opponents). Moreover, agents can also change their opinions simply because of the symbolic attraction force exerted by the group or the leader. In the long run, it appears that a high attraction force can compensate for a lack of persuasion force to ensure that more than half of the members subscribe to the policy presented by the leader. Such a situation is stable. Conversely, a high persuasion force, when the attraction force of the leader's group is relatively low, can generate the occurrence of a two-period cycle through a flip bifurcation such that the leader loses the majority from one period to another. |
| Abstract: | Cet article propose d'adapter un modèle simple de propagation de maladie à la persuasion politique. Plus précisément, nous étudions comment une politique présentée par un leader se diffuse dans un comité divisé en deux groupes : les adhérents et les opposants. A chaque date, les agents des deux groupes se rencontrent et s'influencent mutuellement en fonction de la force de persuasion du leader. Si la force de persuasion du leader domine (est dominée), alors certains opposants (adhérents) deviennent des adhérents (opposants). De plus, les agents peuvent également changer d'opinion simplement en raison de la force d'attraction symbolique de chaque groupe ou du leader. A long terme, il apparaît qu'une force d'attraction élevée puisse compenser une force de persuasion faible pour s'assurer que plus de la moitié des membres souscrivent à la politique présentée par le leader. Une telle situation est stable. Inversement, une force de persuasion élevée, lorsque la force d'attraction du groupe du leader est relativement faible, peut générer l'apparition d'un cycle de deux périodes, via l'occurrence d'une bifurcation flip, telle que le leader perd la majorité d'une période à l'autre. |
| Keywords: | Flip bifurcation Opinion dynamics Political persuasion SIS models, Flip bifurcation, Opinion dynamics, Political persuasion, SIS models |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04711036 |
| By: | Javier Cembrano; Jos\'e Correa; Gonzalo D\'iaz; Victor Verdugo |
| Abstract: | How to elect the representatives in legislative bodies is a question that every modern democracy has to answer. This design task has to consider various elements so as to fulfill the citizens' expectations and contribute to the maintenance of a healthy democracy. The notion of proportionality, in that the support of a given idea in the house should be nearly proportional to its support in the general public, lies at the core of this design task. In the last decades, demographic aspects beyond political support have been incorporated by requiring that they are also fairly represented in the body, giving rise to a multidimensional version of the apportionment problem. In this work, we provide an axiomatic justification for a recently proposed notion of multidimensional proportionality and extend it to encompass two relevant constraints often used in electoral systems: a threshold on the number of votes that a list needs in order to be eligible and the election of the most-voted candidate in each district. We then build upon these results to design methods based on multidimensional proportionality. We use the Chilean Constitutional Convention election (May 15-16, 2021) results as a testing ground -- where the dimensions are given by political lists, districts, and genders -- and compare the apportionment obtained under each method according to three criteria: proportionality, representativeness, and voting power. While local and global methods exhibit a natural trade-off between local and global proportionality, including the election of most-voted candidates on top of methods based on 3-dimensional proportionality allows us to incorporate both notions while ensuring higher levels of representativeness and a balanced voting power. |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2410.03304 |