Strategic Delegation and Voting Rules

Bard Hastad
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Bard Harstad

No 1442, Discussion Papers from Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science

Abstract: When making collective decisions, principals (voters or districts) typically benefit by strategically delegating their bargaining and voting power to representatives different from themselves. There are conflicting views in the literature, however, of whether such a delegate should be "conservative" (status quo biased) or instead "progressive" relative to his principal. I show how the answer depends on the political system in general, and the majority requirement in particular. A larger majority requirement leads to conservative delegation, but "sincere" delegation is always achieved by the optimal voting rule.

Keywords: Strategic delegation; collective decisions; voting rules (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D72 F53 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pbe and nep-pol
Date: 2007-02
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