A social-choice perspective on authoritarianism and political polarization

Salvatore Barbaro ()

No 2108, Working Papers from Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Abstract: Facing a spreading of polarization and authoritarianism, research from various disciplines attempted to explore the sources of this threatening development in many societies. Socio-economic factors, as well as the diffusion of social media, were identified as explaining factors. We emphasize another source for the success of polarizing politicians: The collective-decision rules. We show that several frequently used voting schemes greatly support polarizing candidates’ success while other voting rules that are often scientifically proposed but rarely in use are much more appropriate to avoid polarizing candidates’ success. The simple-majority rule and the Borda count are more suitable for preventing society from a polarizing candidate’s landslide. By comparing the two last-mentioned voting rules, we find that the Borda count has some advantage over the simple-majority rule.

JEL-codes: D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2108.pdf First version, 2021 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2108

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