Enfranchisement, Intra-Elite Conflict and Bargaining

Sayantan Ghosal and Eugenio Proto

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Does power sharing between competing elites result in franchise extension to non-elites? In this paper, we argue that competing, risk-averse elites will enfranchise non-elites as in-surance against future, uncertain imbalances in relative bargaining power. We show that negligibly small changes in the bargaining power of non-elites, conditional on enfranchisment, via coalition formation, constrains the bargaining power of the stronger elite and result in discontinuous changes in equilibrium surplus division. Our results are robust to public good provision following enfranchisement when there is reference heterogeneity over the location of the public good across the different elites. We conclude with a comparative analysis of Indian democracy and show that our model is able to account for some of the distinctive features of Indian democracy.

Keywords: enfranchisemnt; elite; non-elites; conflict; bargaining; risk-sharing; Indian democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-gth and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Enfranchisement, Intra-Elite Conflict and Bargaining (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:750

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