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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Guenther, Laurenz; Nunnari, Salvatore |
| Abstract: | Research on the rise of populism has largely overlooked the explanation populists themselves advance: that they fill political representation gaps, defined as discrepancies between mainstream parties’ policies and the “popular will.†We test this claim in an information-provision experiment conducted in the weeks leading up to the 2025 German federal election. A sample of 5, 040 German citizens was randomly assigned varying information about the immigration stance of Germany’s mainstream center-right CDU—an issue marked by a substantial representation gap. We find that perceptions of the CDU’s position significantly affect both vote intentions and incentivized behavioral measures: when the CDU is perceived as closer to the electorate’s conservative preferences on immigration, support for the right-wing populist AfD declines. Our estimates indicate that the AfD’s vote share would shrink by as much as 75% if the CDU adopted its immigration stance. These results suggest that the electoral success of populist parties is strongly linked to genuine policy preferences, rather than being driven solely by dissatisfaction with political elites or protest voting. |
| Keywords: | Populism; Elections; Immigration |
| JEL: | D72 C93 K37 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20643 |
| By: | Gersbach, Hans |
| Abstract: | We present Pendular Voting as a novel two-stage voting procedure with applications to direct and representative democracies. A randomly chosen citizen group first votes on a proposal replacing the status quo. Depending on the outcome, a “counterproposal†ensues, positioned closer to or further away from the status quo than the original proposal. All citizens then vote pairwise on the status quo, the initial proposal, and the counterproposal, with the middle alternative prevailing in the case of cyclical collective preferences. We analyze the process on a one-dimensional policy space under uncertainty about preference distribution, showing that manipulation is confined to the first stage, but does not affect the final outcome. Even with selfish agenda setters, Pendular Voting can deliver results closer to the median voter’s preferences than standard procedures. In parliamentary contexts, pairing bills with structured counterproposals could shift outcomes toward the chamber’s median preference while reducing agenda manipulation. |
| Keywords: | Democracy; Manipulation; Information sharing; Referendum |
| JEL: | C72 D70 D72 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20656 |
| By: | Egorov, Georgy; Guriev, Sergei; Mironov, Maxim; Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina |
| Abstract: | Why do political campaigns so often yield unexpected results? We address this question by separately estimating the direct effect of a campaign on targeted voters and the indirect effect on others in the same social environment. Partnering with a local NGO during Argentina’s 2023 presidential election, we randomized the distribution of leaflets providing an expert assessment of the consequences of the potentially dangerous proposals by the outsider candidate Javier Milei. Exploiting Argentina’s unique sub-precinct election reporting system, we show that the campaign reduced Milei’s support among directly treated voters, as expected, but increased his support among untreated voters in treated precincts, producing a backfiring, net-positive effect for Milei. A pre-registered replication confirmed these opposite-signed effects. Using theory and a survey experiment, we show that the minority of voters who disbelieved the campaign were more motivated to discuss it with peers, convincing them to support Milei. This mobilization effect appears especially likely when campaigns criticize outsider candidates. Our results highlight how campaigns aimed at anti-elite candidates can unintentionally mobilize support for them. |
| Keywords: | Political Information Campaign; Elections; Argentina; Milei; Network effects; Spillovers |
| JEL: | P00 D72 C93 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20781 |
| By: | Kirchsteiger, Georg; Lenaerts, Tom; Suchon, Remi |
| Abstract: | Experimental evidence shows that in a repeated dilemma setting cooperation is more likely in small matching groups than in large ones. This result holds even if cooperation is an equilibrium outcome for all investigated group sizes. But what happens if small matching groups are merged to become large ones? Our paper is based on the idea that due to behavioral spillovers, a large group created by a merger of small groups is more likely to cooperate than a large group of similar size that is created directly. We tested this idea experimentally in the context of an infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma game. We compared the cooperation behavior of groups that result from mergers of smaller groups with the cooperation behavior of groups with constant group size. We found that cooperation levels were significantly higher in large groups that resulted from gradual growth than in large groups of the same size that were directly created. Looking at the individual behavior, we see that more subjects adopt lenient strategies when the group size increases than when it is already large from the beginning. Hence, our results confirm the idea that cooperation is much more likely to be achieved when groups grow from small to large than when large groups are formed directly. |
| Keywords: | Prisoner's dilemma |
| JEL: | C73 C92 D23 D90 L22 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20326 |
| By: | Bombardini, Matilde; Finan, Frederico; Longuet-Marx, Nicolas; Naidu, Suresh; Trebbi, Francesco |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of climate change and mitigation-related employment changes on U.S. politics. We combine 2000-2020 precinct-level voting information and congressional candidate positions on environmental policy with high-resolution temperature, precipitation, and census block-group level measures of “green†and “brown†employment shares. Holding politician positions fixed within a district, we find that Democratic vote shares increase with exogenous changes in local climate and green transition employment. We embed these estimates into a model of political competition, including both direct and demand-driven effects of shocks on candidate supply of climate policy positions. Incorporating these estimates into 2022-2050 projections of climate change and green employment transition, we find that voting for the Democratic Party increases, while both parties move slightly to the right on climate policy. Under worst-case climate projections and current mitigation trajectories, our estimates indicate that the probability the House passes a carbon-pricing bill is 9 percentage points higher in 2050 than in 2020. |
| JEL: | P0 D72 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20578 |
| By: | Gersbach, Hans; Schneider, Maik T.; Tejada, Oriol |
| Abstract: | We study how democracies can manage extremist minority views through Coalition-Preclusion Promises (CPPs), where parties credibly commit to excluding extremists from governing coalitions. We identify conditions under which CPPs improve social welfare by preventing extreme policy shifts. However, these benefits depend on parties’ incentives and voters’ ability to coordinate. The resulting voting game features multiple equilibria, and we extend typical equilibrium selection criteria. Our findings suggest CPPs can be an effective strategy to keep extremist parties out of government. |
| Keywords: | Coalition formation; Political contracts; Elections; Government formation |
| JEL: | D72 D82 H55 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20435 |
| By: | Besley, Tim; Brzezinski, Adam |
| Abstract: | We develop a dynamic model where two parties compete for office by offering policies supported by narratives that describe policy effects. Voters demand narratives that suit their interests based on motivated reasoning and parties supply narratives to win elections. Over time, the set of narratives can expand endogenously. We characterize equilibrium paths and show how polarizing narratives can benefit a party through enabling policy differentiation. We then develop a specific application to ``neoliberalism'', a policy narrative that gained currency in the late 1970s. Our analysis clarifies why the 1970s oil shocks incentivized parties on the right to supply neoliberal narratives and why that prompted parties on the left to respond with the ``Third Way'' narrative that became a new consensus. These narrative dynamics were precipitated by a temporary shock but permanently altered the policy equilibrium, preventing a return to the old post-war consensus. |
| JEL: | D72 D91 H11 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20410 |
| By: | Desmet, Klaus; Ortuño-Ortin, Ignacio; Wacziarg, Romain |
| Abstract: | We develop a new method to endogenously partition society into groups based on homophily in values, using fractional hedonic games as a theoretical foundation. The between-group differentiation that results from this partition provides a novel measure of latent polarization in society. We implement this method empirically using U.S. data from the World Values Survey. For the last forty years, the degree of latent polarization of the U.S. public has been high and relatively stable. In contrast, the degree of values polarization between voters of the two main political parties has steadily increased since the 1990s, and is now converging toward that of underlying values-based clusters. Thus, growing partisan polarization in the U.S. is a reflection of partisan views becoming increasingly aligned with the main values based clusters in society. |
| Keywords: | partisan polarization; social polarization; Homophily; Values-based clusters |
| JEL: | D71 D72 Z1 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20644 |
| By: | Stefano Balietti; Pietro Saggese; Markus Strohmaier |
| Abstract: | Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) use token-weighted voting to allocate resources, set protocol rules, and legitimate collective decisions. Yet, support in DAO voting is strikingly concentrated. What happens inside the ballot that produces this concentration? We study DAOs' governance at the proposal-choice level, linking each choice's voting-power share to three observable features: whether it expresses an approval-oriented stance, where it appears in the choice list, and whether it is selected by the proposal author. We find that (i) author-selected choices show the strongest and most robust association with voting-power share, with a 58.8% increase relative to non-author choices; (ii) approval-oriented choices retain a positive but slightly less consistent advantage (27.1%); and (iii) first-listed choices also attract systematically higher shares, consistent with position and order effects (7.7%). Results are robust across several specifications, which include subtracting an author's own voting power from computations. We use bias descriptively, to denote systematic associations rather than proven causal distortion. The results shift attention from proposal outcomes alone to the interface and social signals through which choices are presented. In DAO governance, ordering, author signals, and vote visibility should be treated as institutional design choices, not neutral implementation details. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.09435 |
| By: | Lint Barrage (Chair of Energy and Climate Economics, ETH Zurich); Gustav Fredriksson (Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | What drives voter decisions on carbon pricing? Analyzing Switzerland's 2021 CO2 Act referendum, this paper finds that support was substantially higher in municipalities experiencing unusually warm weather during the voting period. This effect is most robust relative to a recent temperature baseline, consistent with a 'frog in hot water' effect. Opposition was stronger in areas with higher correlates of policy costs, such as car ownership and manufacturing employment. Evidence on long‐run temperature trends is mixed. These findings suggest that future weather anomalies may increase electoral support for carbon pricing. |
| Keywords: | Carbon Pricing Support, Referendum, Temperature Anomalies, Climate Change |
| JEL: | Q4 D7 H2 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep1326 |
| By: | Kazumasa Ikeda |
| Abstract: | We introduce a new non-manipulability axiom called worst-case strategy-proofness (WCSP). This axiom is weaker than strategy-proofness and stronger than non-obvious manipulability-worst (NOM-worst) by Troyan and Morrill (2020). WCSP focuses on non-manipulability in a worst-case scenario. We examine the implications of WCSP in a voting model. Although many voting rules, such as the plurality rule, the Borda rule, and the Dowdall rule, satisfy NOM-worst, they violate WCSP. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the anti-plurality rule with fixed-order tie-breaking to satisfy WCSP in terms of the numbers of agents and alternatives. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.22021 |
| By: | Lawrence S. Moss; Arthur Paul Pedersen |
| Abstract: | This paper studies strict majority reasoning in finite electorates using so-called $\textit{social decision frames}$: finite sets of voters equipped with distinguished families of coalitions interpreted as those voting blocs evaluated to form a strict majority. A coherence criterion for qualitative majority judgments is identified and shown to give an exact characterization for representability of strict majorities by finitely additive measures. In addition, a minimal natural logic for reasoning about strict majorities is shown to be sound and complete. These developments motivate examination of associated combinatorial questions concerning incoherence in finite families of sets; partial results and a conjecture are given. Finally, the results of this paper are applied to correct a classical representation theorem for weak qualitative probability structures due to Patrick Suppes and to establish a May-type characterization for ordinary strict majority rule for social decision frames. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.23853 |
| By: | Voss, Dustin |
| Abstract: | Political cleavages in rich democracies are increasingly characterised by struggles over different forms of asset ownership. To explain the outcomes of asset struggles and their cross-country variation, I focus on the role of producer group politics in shaping national credit policy. Producer groups display conflicting preferences regarding credit permissiveness. Easy access to mortgages and housing wealth benefits firms in the financial sector and can help parties expand electoral coalitions, but such policies can also create wage pressures that weaken the competitiveness of exporters. The (re)configuration of political support coalitions determines how this tradeoff is decided. A most-similar comparative case study of credit regulation in Germany and Sweden substantiates the argument. In Germany, an export coalition supported incremental financial liberalisation that followed a purpose-driven path in line with the preferred macroeconomic policies of the manufacturing sector. In Sweden, the financial sector defected from a rigid credit control regime and lobbied for radical financial liberalisation while incumbents lacked organisational capacity and willingness to defend the status quo. The article provides a comparative analysis of asset struggles and improves our understanding of the coalitional mechanisms that create the potential for real estate bubbles, financial crisis, and asset inequalities in rich democracies. |
| Keywords: | asset struggles;credit permissiveness;growth coalitions;homeownership;producer groups |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2026–06–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140263 |