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How the Republic of Venice chose its Doge: lot-based elections and supermajority rule

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  • M. Cristina Molinari

    (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)

Abstract

We study a family of voting rules inspired by the peculiar protocol used for over 500 years by the Republic of Venice to elect its Doge. Lot-based indirect elections have two main features: a pool of delegates is chosen by lot out of a general assembly, and then they vote in a single winner election with qualified majority. Under the assumption that the assembly is divided into two factions, we characterise the win probability of the minority and show that these features promote a more equitable allocation of political representation, striking a balance between protecting the minority and giving proper recognition to the majority. We then consider this family of voting procedures from a constitutional perspective: we analyse how the electoral result varies with the college size and the winning threshold in order to understand how these two parameters can be tuned when drawing up electoral law. We find that minorities are better off with larger majority thresholds. The role of the college size, on the other hand, is ambiguous: a smaller college size offers more protection to sparse minorities; for more sizeable ones, it depends instead on the qualified majority required for the election.

Suggested Citation

  • M. Cristina Molinari, 2020. "How the Republic of Venice chose its Doge: lot-based elections and supermajority rule," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 169-187, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:31:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s10602-019-09290-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10602-019-09290-6
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Greif, Avner & Laitin, David D., 2004. "A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(4), pages 633-652, November.
    2. George Tridimas, 2012. "Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: the rationality of selection to office by lot," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 1-21, March.
    3. Caplin, Andrew S & Nalebuff, Barry J, 1988. "On 64%-Majority Rule," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 787-814, July.
    4. Dennis Mueller & Robert Tollison & Thomas Willett, 1972. "Representative democracy via random selection," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 57-68, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Daniel J. Smith & George R. Crowley & J. Sebastian Leguizamon, 2021. "Long live the doge? Death as a term limit on Venetian chief executives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 333-359, September.
    2. Maria Cristina Molinari, 2023. "Much ado about nothing: voting in the sixteenth-century Republic of Genoa," Working Papers 2023:13, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Voting; Minority protection; Probabilistic proportional representation; Sortition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • C6 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling

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