Is There a Dividend of Democracy? Experimental Evidence from Cooperation Games

Thomas Markussen and Jean-Robert Tyran

No 10616, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

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 adoption of cooperation-improving policies. While many studies find positive dividends of democracy across a broad range of cooperation settings, we also report on studies that find no dividend. We conclude that the existence of a dividend of democracy cannot be considered a stylized fact. 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. Accepting a policy in a vote seems to increase the legitimacy of a cooperation-inducing policy in some cultures but not in others.

Keywords: voting collective decision making; public goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D70 D90 H40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10616

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