Individual preferences and democratic processes: two theorems with implications for electoral politics

Kaushik Basu and Tapan Mitra

Social Choice and Welfare, 2020, vol. 54, issue 2, No 6, 259-292

Abstract: Abstract The paper provides a complete characterization of Nash equilibria for games in which n candidates choose a strategy in the form of a platform, each from a circle of feasible platforms, with the aim of maximizing the stretch of the circle from where the candidate’s platform will receive support from the voters. Using this characterization, it is shown that if the sum of all players’ payoffs is 1, the Nash equilibrium payoff of each player in an arbitrary Nash equilibrium must be restricted to the interval $$ [1/2(n-1),2/(n+1)].$$[1/2(n-1),2/(n+1)]. This implies that in an election with four candidates, a candidate who is attracting less than one-sixth of the voters can do better by changing his or her strategy.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00355-019-01175-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:sochwe:v:54:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s00355-019-01175-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... c+theory/journal/355

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-019-01175-9

Access Statistics for this article

Social Choice and Welfare is currently edited by Bhaskar Dutta, Marc Fleurbaey, Elizabeth Maggie Penn and Clemens Puppe

More articles in Social Choice and Welfare from Springer, The Society for Social Choice and Welfare Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().