Incomplete information, proportional representation and strategic voting

Orestis Troumpounis () and Dimitrios Xefteris

No 76166026, Working Papers from Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department

Abstract: We introduce incomplete information to a multiparty election under proportional representation: each voter knows her preferences and votes strategically to maximize her payoffs, but is uncertain about the number and the preferences of the other voters. Parties are assumed to be purely office motivated and, hence, the resulting governments are always minimum winning. In this framework we prove a) generic existence of equilibria where only two parties receive a positive fraction of the votes and therefore lead to single party governments and b) generic inexistence of equilibria that lead to coalition governments. That is, contrary to common wisdom, a proportional rule is found not to promote sincere voting and to be favorable towards single party governments. The existence of two-party equilibria that lead to single party governments is robust to parties having ideological concerns.

Keywords: Proportional elections; strategic voters; incomplete information; Duverger's Hypothesis; Poisson games; Gamson's Law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Incomplete information, proportional representation and strategic voting (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lan:wpaper:76166026

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