Approval quorums dominate participation quorums

Francois Maniquet, Massimo Morelli () and ,

No 2013054, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: We study direct democracy with population uncertainty. Voters’ participation is often among the desiderata by the election designer. We show that with a participation quorum, i.e. a threshold on the fraction of participating voters below which the status quo is kept, the status quo may be kept in situations where the planner would prefer the reform, or the reform is passed when the planner prefers the status quo. On the other hand, using an approval quorum, i.e. a threshold on the number of voters expressing a ballot in favor of the reform below which the status quo is kept, we show that those drawbacks of participation quorums are avoided. Moreover, an electoral system with approval quorum performs better than one with participation quorum even when the planner wishes to implement the corresponding participation quorum social choice function.

Keywords: participation quorum; approval quorum; preference aggregation; information aggregation; implementation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10-23
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Approval quorums dominate participation quorums (2015)
Working Paper: Approval quorums dominate participation quorums (2015)
Working Paper: Approval Quorums Dominate Participation Quorums (2010)
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