Enfranchisement, Intra-Elite Conflict and Bargaining

Sayantan Ghosal and Eugenio Proto

No 269643, Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics

Abstract: Does power sharing between competing elites result in franchise extension to non-elites? In this paper, we argue that competing, risk-averse elites will enfranchise non-elites as insurance against future, uncertain imbalances in relative bargaining power. We show that negligibly small changes in the bargaining power of non-elites, conditional on enfranchisment, via coalition formation, constrains the bargaining power of the stronger elite and result in discontinuous changes in equilibrium surplus division. Our results are robust to public good provision following enfranchisement when there is preference heterogeneity over the location of the public good across the di§erent elites. We conclude with a comparative analysis of Indian democracy and show that our model is able to account for some of the distinctive features of Indian democracy.

Keywords: Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Risk and Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 2006-06-06
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Enfranchisement, Intra-Elite Conflict and Bargaining (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwarer:269643

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.269643

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