A note on majority rule and neutrality with an application to state votes at the Constitutional Convention of 1787

Jac Heckelman

Public Choice, 2016, vol. 167, issue 3, No 4, 245-255

Abstract: Abstract Majority rule used in the legislative process has a bias toward the status quo. This implies that proposals are less likely to pass when the number of voters casting either “yes” or “no” votes sums to an even number rather than an odd number. The implication is weakly supported by examining state votes of 552 motions made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. A difference is found in the expected direction but is not statistically significant at traditional levels.

Keywords: Majority rule; Neutrality; Federal convention; Status quo; Anonymous culture criterion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-016-0339-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:167:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-016-0339-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-016-0339-2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().