Conformity and truthful voting under different voting rules

Bernardo Moreno (), Maria del Pino Ramos-Sosa and Ismael Rodriguez-Lara

No 19/04, ThE Papers from Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada.

Abstract: We induce conformity in a binary-decision voting game in which one of the options require certain support (majority, supermajority or unanimity) to be the adopted decision. We consider heterogenous types of voters in that each of them prefer a different outcome in the voting game. We demonstrate theoretically that truthful voting is the unique equilibrium without conformity for each possible voting rule. Introducing conformity enlarges the set of equilibria, which includes voting profiles in which agents do not necessarily vote for their preferred option. If we account for the presence of non-conformist honest voters that vote truthfully for their preferred option, truthful voting is more pervasive for conformist voters in equilibrium. In our setting, the effects of conformity and honest voters on the likelihood of voting truthfully depend on the voting rule that determines whether or not voters are in a decisive group to implement one of the decisions. We provide empirical support for our theoretical predictions by means of a laboratory experiment. Our findings indeed suggest an interplay between the voting rule and the willingness to conform.

Keywords: truthful voting; conformity; honest voters; voting rules; experimental evidence. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2019-03-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Conformity and truthful voting under different voting rules (2019)
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