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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Yeh, Fang-Jui |
| Abstract: | This study examines the influence of educational qualifications on city councilmen vote shares during Taiwan's 2018 elections. The research provides a concrete quantitative measure for evaluating educational qualifications in politics and explores their role in a candidate's political career. The study finds that candidates from the two major political parties tend to have higher educational qualifications than independent or smaller party candidates, which may impact political party primaries. Regression models indicate that educational qualifications can have an impact on expected vote share, with major party candidates being more affected. However, the study suggests that educational qualifications are not the most crucial factor affecting voters' attitudes towards county and city councilmen. Instead, political experience and issue articulation have more significant impacts. Political figures who focus solely on their educational background should be refocused to have a more diverse political platform that includes participation experience and issue discussion for the benefit of the society as a whole. |
| Date: | 2023–03–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:tgwm3_v1 |
| By: | Rozo Villarraga, Sandra Viviana; Quintana, Alejandra; Urbina Florez, Maria Jose |
| Abstract: | How does easing the economic integration of forced migrants affect native voting behaviors in the Global South This paper assesses how the regularization of half a million Venezuelan forced migrants affected the electoral choices of Colombian natives by comparing election results in municipalities with higher and lower take-up rates for a program that supports forced migrants. The findings show negligible impacts on native voting behavior. The study then conducted a survey experiment to investigate the lack of voter response. Even after receiving information about the pro-gram, Colombian voters showed no changes in voting intentions or prosocial views toward migrants. This suggests that their indifference did not stem from a lack of awareness about the program. In contrast, the electoral indifference of natives may be explained by the fact that the program did not change labor and crime outcomes for native Colombians, and most migrants remained in the informal sector despite benefiting from the program through improvements in labor conditions and better access to public services. |
| Date: | 2023–03–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10342 |
| By: | Anderson, D. Mark; Charles, Kerwin Kofi; Karbownik, Krzysztof; Rees, Daniel I.; Steffens, Camila |
| Abstract: | The Poor People's Campaign (PPC) of 1968 was focused on highlighting, and ultimately reducing, poverty in the United States. As part of the campaign, protestors from across the country were transported to Washington, D.C. in 6 separate bus caravans, each of which made stops en route to rest, recruit, and hold non-violent protests. Using data from 1960-1970, we estimate the effects of these protests on congressional election outcomes. In the South, we find that PPC protests led to reductions in Democratic vote share and turnout, while in the West they may have benefited Democratic candidates at the expense of their Republican rivals. |
| Keywords: | Civil Rights, Election, Political Economics, Protests |
| JEL: | D72 I30 J15 N32 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:312178 |
| By: | Kiran Tomlinson; Johan Ugander; Jon Kleinberg |
| Abstract: | Recent research on instant runoff voting (IRV) shows that it exhibits a striking combinatorial property in one-dimensional preference spaces: there is an "exclusion zone" around the median voter such that if a candidate from the exclusion zone is on the ballot, then the winner must come from the exclusion zone. Thus, in one dimension, IRV cannot elect an extreme candidate as long as a sufficiently moderate candidate is running. In this work, we examine the mathematical structure of exclusion zones as a broad phenomenon in more general preference spaces. We prove that with voters uniformly distributed over any $d$-dimensional hyperrectangle (for $d > 1$), IRV has no nontrivial exclusion zone. However, we also show that IRV exclusion zones are not solely a one-dimensional phenomenon. For irregular higher-dimensional preference spaces with fewer symmetries than hyperrectangles, IRV can exhibit nontrivial exclusion zones. As a further exploration, we study IRV exclusion zones in graph voting, where nodes represent voters who prefer candidates closer to them in the graph. Here, we show that IRV exclusion zones present a surprising computational challenge: even checking whether a given set of positions is an IRV exclusion zone is NP-hard. We develop an efficient randomized approximation algorithm for checking and finding exclusion zones. We also report on computational experiments with exclusion zones in two directions: (i) applying our approximation algorithm to a collection of real-world school friendship networks, we find that about 60% of these networks have probable nontrivial IRV exclusion zones; and (ii) performing an exhaustive computer search of small graphs and trees, we also find nontrivial IRV exclusion zones in most graphs. While our focus is on IRV, the properties of exclusion zones we establish provide a novel method for analyzing voting systems in metric spaces more generally. |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2502.16719 |
| By: | Joshua C. Yang; Fynn Bachmann |
| Abstract: | Democratic processes increasingly aim to integrate large-scale voting with face-to-face deliberation, addressing the challenge of reconciling individual preferences with collective decision-making. This work introduces new methods that use algorithms and computational tools to bridge online voting with face-to-face deliberation, tested in two real-world scenarios: Kultur Komitee 2024 (KK24) and vTaiwan. These case studies highlight the practical applications and impacts of the proposed methods. We present three key contributions: (1) Radial Clustering for Preference Based Subgroups, which enables both in-depth and broad discussions in deliberative settings by computing homogeneous and heterogeneous group compositions with balanced and adjustable group sizes; (2) Human-in-the-loop MES, a practical method that enhances the Method of Equal Shares (MES) algorithm with real-time digital feedback. This builds algorithmic trust by giving participants full control over how much decision-making is delegated to the voting aggregation algorithm as compared to deliberation; and (3) the ReadTheRoom deliberation method, which uses opinion space mapping to identify agreement and divergence, along with spectrum-based preference visualisation to track opinion shifts during deliberation. This approach enhances transparency by clarifying collective sentiment and fosters collaboration by encouraging participants to engage constructively with differing perspectives. By introducing these actionable frameworks, this research extends in-person deliberation with scalable digital methods that address the complexities of modern decision-making in participatory processes. |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2502.05017 |
| By: | Parmigiani, Alberto |
| Abstract: | What is the relationship between campaign contributions and legislative behavior of elected representatives? In this paper, I find that more concentrated donations negatively correlate with three costly legislative endeavors of members of Congress: bill sponsorship, speechmaking on the floor and witness appearances before committees. For bill sponsorship, the negative correlation is stronger for topics related to redistribution, such as health and social welfare bills. To interpret these results, I argue that a more skewed structure of contributions makes members of Congress more dependent on their top donors and thus potentially more inclined to represent their interests. By reciprocating favors to donors, by seeking to secure their continued financial support, or simply by enjoying more leisure time as a result of feeling secure in their financial backing, federal legislators are less active in activities related to the Congressional agenda and public policy. Overall, I contend that campaign contributions distort the incentives of elected representatives to allocate legislative effort in Congress. |
| Keywords: | legislative behavior; agenda; campaign donations; congress; money in politics |
| JEL: | D72 I38 P16 |
| Date: | 2025–03–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:127295 |