A dividend of democracy

Thomas Markussen and Jean-Robert Tyran

Chapter 34 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Choice, 2025, pp 235-243 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Do democratically chosen rules lead to more cooperation and, hence, higher efficiency than imposed rules? To discuss when such a “dividend of democracy” obtains, we review experimental studies in which material incentives remain stacked against cooperation (i.e., free-riding incentives prevail) despite the adoption of cooperation-improving policies. While many studies find positive dividends of democracy across a broad range of settings, we also report on studies that find no dividends. We discuss three channels through which democracy can produce such a dividend: selection, signaling, and motivation. The evidence points to the role of “culture” in conditioning the operation of these channels.

Keywords: Voting; Collective decision making; Public Goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781802207743
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781802207750.00039 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

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:elg:eechap:21298_34

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().