IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v27y2015i1p58-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Voting systems and strategic manipulation: An experimental study

Author

Listed:
  • Anna Bassi

Abstract

This article presents experiments that analyze the strategic behavior of voters under three voting systems: plurality rule, approval voting, and the Borda count. Applying a level- k reasoning model approach, strategic behavior is found to be significantly different under each treatment (voting system). Plurality rule leads voters to play in the most sophisticated (i.e. best response), but not necessarily insincere, manner. Thus, this voting system displays at the same time the highest incidence of best responses and of sincere votes. The opposite holds for the Borda count games, where voters depart from their sincere strategy the most, without playing the best response strategy. Approval voting shows intermediate levels of sophistication and sincere behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Bassi, 2015. "Voting systems and strategic manipulation: An experimental study," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 58-85, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:27:y:2015:i:1:p:58-85
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629813514300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629813514300
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629813514300?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles A. Holt & Lisa R. Anderson, 1999. "Agendas and Strategic Voting," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(3), pages 622-629, January.
    2. Niemi, Richard G., 1984. "The Problem of Strategic Behavior under Approval Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(4), pages 952-958, December.
    3. Battaglini, Marco & Morton, Rebecca & Palfrey, Thomas, 2007. "Efficiency, Equity, and Timing of Voting Mechanisms," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(3), pages 409-424, August.
    4. Forsythe, Robert & Rietz, Thomas & Myerson, Roger & Weber, Robert, 1996. "An Experimental Study of Voting Rules and Polls in Three-Candidate Elections," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 25(3), pages 355-383.
    5. David A. Smith, 1999. "Manipulability measures of common social choice functions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 16(4), pages 639-661.
    6. Stahl Dale O. & Wilson Paul W., 1995. "On Players' Models of Other Players: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 218-254, July.
    7. Vincent P. Crawford & Miguel A. Costa-Gomes, 2006. "Cognition and Behavior in Two-Person Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1737-1768, December.
    8. Plott, Charles R & Levine, Michael E, 1978. "A Model of Agenda Influence on Committee Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(1), pages 146-160, March.
    9. Rick Wilson & Anne Pearson, 1987. "Evidence of sophisticated voting in a committee setting: theory and experiments," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 255-273, September.
    10. Myerson, Roger B. & Weber, Robert J., 1993. "A Theory of Voting Equilibria," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(1), pages 102-114, March.
    11. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    12. Norman Schofield, 1983. "Generic Instability of Majority Rule," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 50(4), pages 695-705.
    13. Morton, Rebecca B. & Williams, Kenneth C., 1999. "Information Asymmetries and Simultaneous versus Sequential Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 93(1), pages 51-67, March.
    14. Aki Lehtinen, 2007. "The Welfare Consequences of Strategic Voting in Two Commonly Used Parliamentary Agendas," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 1-40, August.
    15. McKelvey, Richard D, 1979. "General Conditions for Global Intransitivities in Formal Voting Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1085-1112, September.
    16. Colin F. Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin-Kuan Chong, 2004. "A Cognitive Hierarchy Model of Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 861-898.
    17. Eckel, Catherine & Holt, Charles A, 1989. "Strategic Voting in Agenda-Controlled Committee Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 763-773, September.
    18. Fiorina, Morris P. & Plott, Charles R., 1978. "Committee Decisions under Majority Rule: An Experimental Study," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 575-598, June.
    19. Saari, Donald G., 1989. "A dictionary for voting paradoxes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 443-475, August.
    20. Cox, Gary W., 1994. "Strategic Voting Equilibria under the Single Nontransferable Vote," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(3), pages 608-621, September.
    21. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
    22. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-1326, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    2. Bernardo Moreno & María del Pino Ramos-Sosa & Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2019. "Conformity and truthful voting under different voting rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(2), pages 261-282, August.
    3. Francesco De Sinopoli & Giovanna Iannantuoni & Maria Vittoria Levati & Ivan Soraperra, 2016. "Electing a parliament: an experimental study," Working Papers 11/2016, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    4. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    5. Christoph Kuzmics & Daniel Rodenburger, 2018. "A case of evolutionary stable attainable equilibrium in the lab," Graz Economics Papers 2018-05, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    6. Tomas J. McIntee, 2017. "A geometric model of sensitivity of multistage elections to change," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(1), pages 89-115, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arnaud Dellis & Sean D’Evelyn & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2011. "Multiple votes, ballot truncation and the two-party system: an experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 171-200, July.
    2. Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy," Working Papers 91, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    3. Thomas R. Palfrey, 2005. "Laboratory Experiments in Political Economy," Working Papers 91, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    4. repec:pri:cepsud:111palfrey is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Vincent P. Crawford & Nagore Iriberri, 2004. "Fatal Attraction: Focality, Naivete, and Sophistication in Experimental Hide-and-Seek Games," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000316, UCLA Department of Economics.
    6. Choo, Lawrence C.Y & Kaplan, Todd R., 2014. "Explaining Behavior in the "11-20" Game," MPRA Paper 52808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Kyle Hyndman & Antoine Terracol & Jonathan Vaksmann, 2022. "Beliefs and (in)stability in normal-form games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(4), pages 1146-1172, September.
    8. Breitmoser, Yves, 2019. "Knowing me, imagining you: Projection and overbidding in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 423-447.
    9. Miguel A Costa-Gomes & Vincent P Crawford & Nagore Iriberri, 2008. "Comparing Models of Strategic Thinking in Van Huyck, Battalio, and Beil’s Coordination Games," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000002346, David K. Levine.
    10. Vincent P. Crawford & Nagore Iriberri, 2007. "Level-k Auctions: Can a Nonequilibrium Model of Strategic Thinking Explain the Winner's Curse and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(6), pages 1721-1770, November.
    11. Nagel, Rosemarie & Bühren, Christoph & Frank, Björn, 2017. "Inspired and inspiring: Hervé Moulin and the discovery of the beauty contest game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 191-207.
    12. Marco Battaglini & Rebecca B. Morton & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2010. "The Swing Voter's Curse in the Laboratory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(1), pages 61-89.
    13. Penczynski, Stefan P., 2017. "The nature of social learning: Experimental evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 148-165.
    14. Wright, James R. & Leyton-Brown, Kevin, 2017. "Predicting human behavior in unrepeated, simultaneous-move games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 16-37.
    15. Healy, Paul J. & Park, Hyoeun, 2023. "Model selection accuracy in behavioral game theory: A simulation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    16. Juan D. Carrillo & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2009. "The Compromise Game: Two-Sided Adverse Selection in the Laboratory," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 151-181, February.
    17. Syngjoo Choi, 2012. "A cognitive hierarchy model of learning in networks," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(2), pages 215-250, September.
    18. Duffy, Sean & Smith, John, 2011. "Cognitive load in the multi-player prisoner's dilemma game," MPRA Paper 30856, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Breitmoser, Yves & Tan, Jonathan H.W. & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2014. "On the beliefs off the path: Equilibrium refinement due to quantal response and level-k," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 102-125.
    20. Despoina Alempaki & Andrew M. Colman & Felix Kölle & Graham Loomes & Briony D. Pulford, 2022. "Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 656-679, April.
    21. Berger, Ulrich & De Silva, Hannelore & Fellner-Röhling, Gerlinde, 2016. "Cognitive hierarchies in the minimizer game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 337-348.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:27:y:2015:i:1:p:58-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.