The Democracy Premium in Expressive Law: An Experiment

Yoan Hermstrüwer () and Mahdi Khesali ()
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Yoan Hermstrüwer: University of Zurich, Switzerland
Mahdi Khesali: University of Hamburg & Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

No 2025_06, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: Why do people obey the law when it is not formally enforced? In this study, we explore the expressive power of democracy as a behavioral channel of compliance with the law. Using a modified version of the stealing game, we examine the effect of two distinct democratic interventions on stealing under normative ambiguity: a voting procedure in which the outcome is revealed, and a voting procedure in which the outcome of the vote remains unknown. We find that revealing the outcome of a vote significantly reduces stealing relative to a baseline treatment without a vote and the treatment in which the outcome of the vote remains unknown. We also observe suggestive evidence that participants who support the social norm proscribing theft are more likely to steal nonetheless when the outcome remains unknown. Our findings have important implications for the design of expressive law and of democratic voting procedures.

JEL-codes: C91 D72 D91 K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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