Predicting majority rule: Evaluating the uncovered set and the strong point

Jacob Bower-Bir, William Bianco, Nicholas D’Amico, Christopher Kam, Itai Sened and Regina Smyth
Additional contact information
Jacob Bower-Bir: Department of Political Science, Indiana University, USA; Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, USA
William Bianco: Department of Political Science, Indiana University, USA
Nicholas D’Amico: Department of Political Science, Indiana University, USA
Christopher Kam: Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Canada
Itai Sened: Department of Political Science, Washington University – St. Louis, USA
Regina Smyth: Department of Political Science, Indiana University, USA

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2015, vol. 27, issue 4, 650-672

Abstract: This paper compares two solution concepts for majority rule decision-making in multi-dimensional settings: the uncovered set and the strong point. Our goal is to determine which of these solution concepts is the appropriate generalization of the median voter theorem to more complex (and more realistic) multi-dimensional majority-rule settings. By making this comparison, we also contribute to the debate about the degree of sophisticated decision-making exhibited by experimental subjects and their real-world counterparts. Using data from eleven previously-published majority rule experiments and analytic techniques drawn from geography, our analysis confirms expectations that the uncovered set provides accurate predictions of majority-rule decision-making; and, moreover, that the strong point provides little added insight, either as a solution concept on its own, or as a predictor of where outcomes lie inside the uncovered set.

Keywords: Majority rule; median voter theorem; modeling; spatial; strong point; uncovered set (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629814562289 (text/html)

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:sae:jothpo:v:27:y:2015:i:4:p:650-672

DOI: 10.1177/0951629814562289

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().