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on Collective Decision-Making |
| By: | Austin Lieberman; Matthew I. Jones |
| Abstract: | We create a set of 6 axioms relating to strategic voting and study them on single transferable vote (STV), Meek STV, Bloc, Chamberlin-Courant, Monroe, and k-Borda. For Chamberlin-Courant, Monroe, and k-Borda, we implement ``optimistic'' and ``pessimistic'' models for handing incomplete ballots, thus turning each of the three into two separate voting rules. We determine which voting rules satisfy each axiom. We find that under Chamberlin-Courant and k-Borda, the optimistic models encourage burying, while the pessimistic models encourage truncation strategies, indicating that the handling of partial ballots has tremendous implications for strategic voting. We define an axiom called no skipped payment that differentiates similar rules, as Meek STV and Chamberlin-Courant satisfy it, while STV and Monroe fail. Each voting rule was found to fail favorite betrayal, revealing that none of them are completely immune to strategic voting. In general, STV variants are relatively resistant to strategic voting while Monroe is susceptible to a wide range of strategies. |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2609.37373 |
| By: | Juan Beccuti; Manvir Schneider |
| Abstract: | We study reward design for delegated representatives who acquire costly information and vote on a binary governance proposal. Effort improves both private information and delegated voting weight. We show that no payment rule can make sincere voting strictly optimal at every positive effort profile under a non-neutral prior, while fixed budgets limit accuracy in large symmetric committees. We then compare proportional sharing with a conditional rule that rewards only members of a sufficiently large winning coalition. Unlike proportional sharing, which supports sincere voting only through indifference, the conditional rule makes sincere voting strictly optimal at symmetric positive effort profiles. It supports sincere equilibria with the same effort as proportional sharing and, under suitable reward-cost conditions, with strictly higher effort and decision accuracy. Insincere equilibria may nevertheless coexist. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.07959 |
| By: | Vasiliki Fouka; Marco Tabellini |
| Abstract: | In this chapter, we discuss how immigration affects identity, with implications for politics. We build on key insights from social psychology and their formalization in economics to derive predictions about how immigration changes both self-identification and categorization of others into groups. These immigration-induced identity changes can explain two recent political transformations that have characterized many Western democracies: the rise of right-wing populism and the realignment of voters and parties along a socio-cultural, rather than economic, dimension of political conflict. We also discuss how immigration can reshape group boundaries and political cleavages, depending on the characteristics of immigrants, host populations, and the local context. We highlight open questions and possible directions for future research |
| Keywords: | Immigration, refugees, social identity, nationalism, redistribution, populism, polarization |
| JEL: | D91 J15 D72 N32 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26247 |
| By: | James Horton (Methodist University, Charles M. Reeves School of Business and Economics) |
| Abstract: | Political support for education spending depends heavily on electoral participation. This paper examines two opposing mechanisms linking voter turnout to state education budgets. Broader participation might amplify demand by increasing the beneficiary share of the electorate, thereby raising political support for spending. Alternatively, it could dilute interest-group influence if organized beneficiaries wield disproportionate power during low-turnout elections but lose relative leverage as the voting pool expands. To evaluate these dynamics, I construct a state-year measure of "adult exposure" as the share of voting-age adults living with school-age children. In a Two-Way Fixed Effects model covering 2012-2022, the interaction is negative across all specifications. At average exposure, higher turnout is associated with a smaller education budget share. While the estimates are imprecise, the results favor interest-group dilution and cast doubt on meaningful demand amplification. Ultimately, the fiscal effect of electoral participation depends entirely on the specific interests it brings into the political process. |
| Keywords: | median voter, voter turnout, electorate composition, education spending, public choice |
| JEL: | D72 H75 I22 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtd:wpaper:002 |
| By: | Cevat Giray Aksoy; Nicolas Ajzenman; Harry Pickard |
| Abstract: | Populists govern more of the world's countries than at any point in the past century, on both the right and the left. What they share is not an economic programme but a worldview that casts politics as a struggle between ordinary citizens and a self-serving establishment, a conflict that is zero-sum at its core. We show that exposure to this political environment leaves a durable imprint on citizens' beliefs. Combining data on populist leaders with surveys of more than 260, 000 respondents in 53 countries, we exploit within-country-survey-year variation across birth cohorts and find that greater exposure during early adulthood is associated with stronger zerosum beliefs later in life. The result is replicated in two independent surveys and across multiple measures of zero-sum thinking and perceived economic conflict and persists into respondents' mid-forties. The associations extend to voting intentions: exposure does not predict support for populist parties overall, but it does predict support for ideologically extreme parties aligned with the populist rule experienced in early adulthood. The mechanism evidence provides little support for an economic-scarcity explanation and instead points towards a rhetorical channel, as populist rule features substantially more anti-elite rhetoric in two independent measures and more domestic zero-sum framing in United Nations speeches. |
| Keywords: | Populism, zero-sum beliefs, political socialisation, belief formation |
| JEL: | D72 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26243 |
| By: | Jesús Fernández-Villaverde; Carlos Sanz |
| Abstract: | How socially distinct are competing political parties' candidate pools? Since names encode cultural milieu, lineage, linguistic origin, and ancestry that standard socioeconomic variables miss, we measure social sorting across parties with names, predicting affiliation out of sample within municipality-years. Across more than 2.5 million local-election candidates, names pick the right-wing candidate in a random within-municipality pair 55.8\% of the time in Spain and 56.5\% in France. Given names alone do most of the work: around 55.0%. Under a stylized model of intergenerational transmission of political orientation, this translates to an implied gap of about 25 p.p. in parental naming propensities. The signal is stable in Spain but doubles in France by 2026. Within ideological families, names separate parties as sharply as across the right--left divide, even more so in France. The Spanish cleavage is linguistic and growing. The French one runs through names of immigrant origin and is strongest in large cities. |
| JEL: | C53 D72 J15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35820 |
| By: | Selcen Çakır (Department of Economics, University of Turku); Asli Ceren Cinar (Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin); Florian Foos (Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science); Konstantinos Matakos (Department of Political Economy, King's College London); Janne Tukiainen (Department of Economics, University of Turku) |
| Abstract: | Parties may trade local choice for leadership control when recruiting candidates, either to promote loyalists or to diversify candidate pools. We quantify the resource cost of centralization using the British Conservative Party’s 2006 A-list reform, which increased national influence over nominations. A-list parliamentary candidates were less locally embedded than other Conservative candidates. Difference-in-differences estimates show that A-list candidacies raised party (non-personal) campaign spending by roughly 11–21%, with no detectable change in candidates’ personal spending or short-run vote share. The increase occurred for both female and male A-list candidates. By 2015, the party further increased its spending. A simple vote-production model maps these estimates into the cost of offsetting weaker local appeal. For vote–spending elasticities between 0.10 and 0.25, offsetting a one-percentage-point appeal deficit requires roughly 11–30% more party funds. The results quantify a previously implicit price of centralized party control. |
| Keywords: | centralized nominations, party control, campaign finance, political selection, vote elasticity, difference-in-differences, United Kingdom |
| JEL: | D72 P16 C23 C26 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tkk:dpaper:dp180 |
| By: | Lotte Swank (University of Groningen); Otto Swank (Erasmus University Rotterdam); Joes de Natris (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) |
| Abstract: | In multi-party parliamentary democracies, governments emerge from post-election bargaining. We study coalition formation in Dutch municipalities. Bargaining models and a norm that "the largest party should govern" predict that party rank affects coalition formation. Using regression discontinuity designs, we find no causal effect of party rank on coalition inclusion. Instead, governments follow a broad-coalition logic: when two parties jointly win a narrow majority, they nevertheless include a third party in 95\% of cases. Parties that participate in coalitions excluding a relatively large party are less likely to enter the next coalition, consistent with dynamic penalties for violating a broad-coalition norm. |
| Keywords: | Coalition formation, Bargaining models, Regression Discontinuity Design, Democratic norms |
| Date: | 2026–10–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260076 |