Ethical considerations on quadratic voting

This paper explores ethical issues raised by quadratic voting. We compare quadratic voting to majority voting from two ethical perspectives: the perspective of utilitarianism and that of democratic theory. From a utilitarian standpoint, the comparison is ambiguous: if voter preferences are independent of wealth, then quadratic voting outperforms majority voting, but if voter preferences are polarized by wealth, then majority voting may be superior. From the standpoint of democratic theory, we argue that assessments in terms of efficiency are too narrow. Voting institutions and political institutions more generally face a legitimacy requirement. We argue that in the presence of inequalities of wealth, any vote buying mechanism, including quadratic voting, will have a difficult time meeting this requirement.     

In remembrance of Robert D. Tollison

We discuss the mechanisms related to quadratic voting, from Vickrey’s counter-speculation mechanism and his second-price auction, through the family of Groves mechanisms and its most notable member, the Clarke mechanism, to the expected externality mechanism, Goeree and Zhang’s mechanism, the Groves–Ledyard mechanism, and the Hylland–Zeckhauser mechanism. We show that each mechanism that involves collective decisions has a quadratic aspect and that all of the mechanisms that we discuss are applications of the fundamental insight that for a process to be efficient, all parties involved must bear the marginal social costs of their actions.     

Efficient bilateral taxation of externalities

We consider the quadratic voting mechanism (Lalley and Weyl in Quadratic voting. Working paper, University of Chicago, 2015; Weyl in The robustness of quadratic voting. Working paper, University of Chicago, 2015) and focus on the incentives it provides individuals deciding what proposals or candidates to put up for a vote. The incentive compatibility of quadratic voting rests upon the assumption that individuals value the money used to buy votes, while the budget balance/efficiency of the mechanism requires that the money spent by one voter by redistributed among the other voters. From these assumptions, we show that it follows that strategic proposers will have an incentive to offer proposals with greater uncertainty about individual values. Similarly, we show that, in an electoral setting, quadratic voting provides an incentive to propose candidates with polarized, non-convergent platforms.     

AMBIGUITY, CONTRADICTIONS, AND FRUSTRATIONS AT THE BALLOT BOX: A PUBLIC CHOICE PERSPECTIVE

A theoretical analysis of citizen participation in politics from a public choice perspective indicates that widespread apathy and disinterest are not aberrations in citizen behavior due to civic irresponsibility or the personal failings of individuals. Rather such responses are highly rational adapta- tions to a political system and political decision-making process over which the individual has little control and participation in which, while demand- ing, yields few tangible returns. Elections and voting are poor mechanisms for aggregating choice, allocating resources or directing public policy.     

Perceptions and reality: Economic voting at the 2004 European Parliament elections

Abstract.  One of the most influential explanations of voting behaviour is based on economic factors: when the economy is doing well, voters reward the incumbent government and when the economy is doing badly, voters punish the incumbent. This reward-punishment model is thought to be particularly appropriate at second order contests such as European Parliament elections. Yet operationalising this economic voting model using citizens' perceptions of economic performance may suffer from endogeneity problems if citizens' perceptions are in fact a function of their party preferences rather than being a cause of their party preferences. Thus, this article models a 'strict' version of economic voting in which they purge citizens' economic perceptions of partisan effects and only use as a predictor of voting that portion of citizens' economic perceptions that is caused by the real world economy. Using data on voting at the 2004 European Parliament elections for 23 European Union electorates, the article finds some, but limited, evidence for economic voting that is dependent on both voter sophistication and clarity of responsibility for the economy within any country. First, only politically sophisticated voters' subjective economic assessments are in fact grounded in economic reality. Second, the portion of subjective economic assessments that is a function of the real world economy is a significant predictor of voting only in single party government contexts where there can be a clear attribution of responsibility. For coalition government contexts, the article finds essentially no impact of the real economy via economic perceptions on vote choice, at least at European Parliament elections.     

Retrospective voting and party support at elections: credit and blame for government and opposition

Retrospective voting is arguably one of the most important mechanisms of representative democracy, and whether or not the public holds the government accountable for its policy performance has been extensively studied. In this paper, we test whether retrospective voting extends to parties in the opposition, that is whether and how parties’ past performance evaluations affect their vote, regardless of whether they were in government or in opposition. Taking advantage of a rich set of questions embedded in a representative German national elections panel, we update our knowledge on the retrospective voting mechanism by modeling retrospective voting at the party level. The findings indicate that the incumbent status is not the only criterion for retrospective voting, ultimately suggesting that both government and opposition parties can expect credit and blame for their conduct and this should provide some impetus for responsive performance of all parties.     

Economic Voting and Multilevel Governance: A Comparative Individual-Level Analysis

An important component of incumbent support is the reward/punishment calculus of economic voting. Previous work has shown that "clarity of responsibility" within the central state government conditions national economic effects on incumbent vote choice: where clarity is high (low), economic effects are greater (less). This article advances the "clarity of responsibility" argument by considering the effect of multilevel governance on economic voting. In institutional contexts of multilevel governance, the process of correctly assigning responsibility for economic outcomes can be difficult. This article tests the proposition that multilevel governance mutes effects of national economic conditions by undermining responsibility linkages to the national government. Individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Module 1 are used to test this proposition. Results demonstrate that economic voting is weakest in countries where multilevel governance is most prominent. Findings are discussed in light of the contribution to the economic voting literature and the potential implications of multilevel governance.     

Individual and contextual variation in EU issue voting: The role of political information

Increasing politicization in EU member states about European issues can be expected to strengthen the impact of attitudes towards Europe on vote choice in European Parliament (EP) elections. At the same time this impact is likely to vary between voters and contexts as a function of political information. This study explores the role of political information in explaining individual and contextual heterogeneity in the degree of EU issue voting. Using a two-step hierarchical estimation procedure to explore both individual and contextual variation, we show that while EU issue voting in the 2009 EP elections is only slightly more pronounced among the politically sophisticated, it is clearly more extensive in contexts that provide higher levels of political information on European matters.     

Do people want a ‘fairer’ electoral system? An experimental study in four countries

When judging how ‘fair’ voting rules are, a fundamental criterion used by both scholars and politicians is their ability or inability to produce proportional results – that is, the extent parties’ seat distribution after the elections accurately reflects their vote shares. How about citizens? Do citizens care about how proportional the outcome is? Or do they judge the outcome solely on the basis of how well (or poorly) their party performed? Taking advantage of a uniquely designed survey experiment, this article investigates the causal effect of proportionality on voter support for voting rules in four countries: Austria, England, Ireland and Sweden. The results show that proportionality drives support for the voting rules not above, but beyond party performance. There is little cross-country variation, which suggests that proportionality is appreciated in different contexts with little status quo bias. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the causal mechanisms linking electoral rules to voter support.     

The stability of international coalitions in United Nations voting from 1946 to 1973

The stability of outcomes under democratic decision-making is a significant issue in public choice. Several factors might make U.N. voting blocs less stable than blocs in national legislatures. Nevertheless, the data suggest that from 1946 to 1973 United Nations voting blocs were relatively stable. Nations that leave their blocs tend to vote with nearby blocs rather than making large ideological shifts, and tend to return to their old blocs. There does not appear to be cycles in United Nations voting blocs. Furthermore, the blocs can be ranked on a stable single-dimensioned continuum, lending further evidence that United Nations voting blocs are stable.     

How do coalition signals shape voting behavior? Revealing the mediating role of coalition expectations

Existing empirical research suggests that there are two mechanisms through which pre-electoral coalition signals shape voting behavior. According to these, coalition signals both shift the perceived ideological positions of parties and prime coalition considerations at the cost of party considerations. The work at hand is the first to test another possibility of how coalition signals affect voting. This coalition expectation mechanism claims that coalition signals affect voting decisions by changing voters' expectations about which coalitions are likely to form after the election. Moreover, this paper provides the first integrative overview of all three mechanisms that link coalition signals and individual voting behavior. Results from a survey experiment conducted during Sweden's 2018 general election suggest that the coalition expectation mechanism can indeed be at work. By showing how parties' pre-electoral coalition behavior enter a voter's decision calculus, the paper provides important insights for the literature on strategic voting theories in proportional systems.     

President Obama on the ballot: Referendum voting and racial spillover in the 2014 midterm elections

The 2014 elections were widely viewed as a referendum on the presidency of Barack Obama. Republicans ran against the incumbent president, and many view the Republican Party's victories in 2014 as a mass rejection of President Obama's policies. We argue that this account of the 2014 elections is incomplete. We advance the theory of racial spillover—that associating an attitude object with President Obama causes public opinion to polarize on the basis of racial attitudes—to explain both vote choice and referendum voting in the 2014 elections. In an analysis of the CCES and an original survey, we show that congressional vote choice was strongly racialized in 2014. We go on to show that perceptions of the election as a referendum on President Obama were also racialized, and that these perceptions mediated the link between racial animus and 2014 congressional vote choice. This represents the first study to show that racialized congressional evaluations continued into 2014 and we provide direct evidence that attitudes about President Obama mediated the effect of racial animus on congressional vote choice. We conclude by discussing the implications for referendum voting, racial spillover, and the 2014 midterm elections.     

Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

Using panel surveys conducted in Great Britain before and after the 1997 general election, we examine the relationship between voting behavior and post-election economic perceptions. Drawing on psychological theories of attitude formation, we argue that those who voted for Labour and the Liberal Democrats perceived the past state of the British economy under the Tory government more negatively than they had prior to casting their ballot in the 1997 election. Similarly, we posit that Labour supporters would view the future state of the national economy under Labour more positively than they had before the election. This indicates that, contrary to many assumptions in the economic voting literature, voting behavior influences evaluations of the economy as voters seek to reduce inconsistencies between their vote choice and evaluations of the economy by bringing their attitudes in line with the vote they cast in the election. It also means that voters’ post-election economic perceptions are, at least in part, influenced by and thus endogenous to their vote choice. This finding has two major implications: first, cross-sectional models of economic voting are likely to overestimate the effect of economic perceptions on the vote. Second, the endogeneity of economic perceptions may compromise the quality of economic voting as a mechanism for democratic accountability.     

Patience as the rational foundation of sociotropic voting

Economic voting is one of the most important mechanisms on explaining voting behavior and on establishing the democratic accountability. However, people tend to use perceived national economic condition on evaluating the incumbent, which is known as sociotropic voting, instead of their pocketbook. Previous studies suggest both altruism and self-interested future expectation may help explain this seemingly irrational behavior, but empirical works have not yet found convincing evidence to prove or disprove the self-interested motivation. This article suggests that patience makes people discount less on the potential future influence of the current national economic change; if self-interest drives sociotropic voting, patient voters would be more sociotropic. Consistent with the hypothesis, individual-level data from 2014 Comparative Congressional Election Survey shows that patient voters rely more on the perceived national economic change to evaluate the incumbent and make vote choice. Limited evidence of the linkage between impatience and pocketbook voting among non-partisans, and on the country-level is also provided.     

Expressive voting and electoral equilibrium

There are two rival accounts of rational voting in the public choice tradition: the mainstream instrumental account, that sees the vote as a revelation of preference over possible electoral outcomes, essentially analogous to a market choice; and the expressive account, that sees the vote as expressing support for one or other electoral options, rather like cheering at a football match. This paper attempts to lay out some of the implications of the expressive account of voting for the issue of who votes as well as for the nature of political equilibrium, and to compare these implications with those derived from the instrumental account. We also identify and discuss the alternative views of the domain of electoral politics associated with the instrumental and expressive accounts of voting, and sketch a route towards the integration of expressive and instrumental ideas in the analysis of rational electoral politics.     

Are Voters Mobilized by a ‘Friend-and-Neighbor’ on the Ballot? Evidence from a Field Experiment

In his seminal work on Southern politics, V.O. Key observed that voters disproportionately support local candidates at the ballot box. While empirical analyses have confirmed “friends-and-neighbors” voting across numerous electoral contexts, no one has directly examined voter turnout as the mechanism linking place of residence to vote choice. We argue that place of residence is a social identity that incentivizes citizens to turn out to vote on behalf of the local candidate. We test this mobilization mechanism using a randomized field experiment conducted during a 2014 state legislative primary election. Our results show that county ties between candidates and voters likely boost turnout. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the importance of place identity for turnout decisions in low-information elections.     

Public Choice Failure and Voter Incompetence in France

This article explains failures of politics and government through the incompetence of voters and their perception biases. It illustrates this argument using the French case. If voters lack knowledge and develop irrational beliefs, then voting is probably not effective as a mechanism for sanctioning public policy. The incompetence of French voters and their anti‐capitalist bias is well documented. This incompetence can be partly explained by the low cost of holding irrational beliefs in politics. Voters’ anti‐capitalist attitudes are explained by the utility they obtain from expressing themselves in favour of state intervention, and by France's prohibitive level of justification costs of holding pro‐capitalist views. The resulting biases contribute to the failure of public choice.     

The nonpartisan ballot and the decline of American parties: A contextual effect?

The nonpartisan municipal ballot is one of several turn-of-the-century reforms intended to weaken political parties. Through its effects on individuals' political contexts and voting experiences, it might have contributed to the twentieth-century decline in public support for political parties. This paper tests this hypothesis with items available in the 1980 CPS presidential election survey augmented with a ballot form variable. There are no significant differences in measures of party support among residents of partisan and nonpartisan communities, and thus no measurable evidence that nonpartisan elections discouraged the public from supporting political parties.This is a revised version of a paper delivered at the XIII World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Paris, July 1985.     

Social mobility and the demand for public consumption expenditures

The collective choice of public consumption expenditure is reconsidered when voters are socially mobile. In accordance with previous work on social mobility and political economics, the analysis concerns a class of mobility processes that induce mappings from initial income to expected future income that are monotonically increasing and concave. The paper abstracts from the explicitly redistributive role of government and concentrates on public consumption which is modeled as a classical public good. In equilibrium, provision is sensitive to the degree of social mobility, theoretically linking social mobility to public consumption. Further, empirical puzzles about the impact of voting franchise extensions on the growth of government spending are addressed within the context of social mobility.