Choosing an Electoral Rule

Damien Bol, André Blais, Maxime Coulombe, Jean-François Laslier and Jean-Benoit Pilet
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Damien Bol: Université de Montréal

No rm2tq, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Citizens are increasingly involved in the design of democratic institutions, for instance via referendums. If they support the institution that best serves their self-interest, the outcome inevitably advantages the largest group and disadvantages minorities. In this paper, we challenge this pessimistic view with an original lab experiment in France and Great Britain. In the first phase, experimental subjects experience elections under plurality and approval voting. In the second phase, they decide which rule they want to use for extra elections. The treatment is whether they do or do not have information to determine where their self-interest lies before deciding. We find that self-interest shapes people’s decisions, but so do intrinsic egalitarian values that subjects have outside of the lab. The implications are: (1) people have consistent ‘value-driven preferences’ for electoral rules, and (2) putting them in a situation of uncertainty leads to an outcome that reflects these values.

Date: 2020-06-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-des, nep-exp and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:rm2tq

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/rm2tq

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