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Information sharing in democratic mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Volker Britz

    (CER-ETH, Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich)

  • Hans Gersbach

    (CER-ETH, Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich)

Abstract

We examine how democratic mechanisms can yield socially desirable outcomes in the presence of uncertainty about an underlying state of nature. We depart from a conventional mechanism design approach because we aim for democratic mechanisms to reflect some basic properties of decision-making in democracies. In particular, actual decisions are made by majority voting. The proposals to be voted upon are made by a selfish agenda-setter. Moreover, communication is limited to a binary message space (that is, voting Yes or No). We show how suitable democratic mechanisms can resolve uncertainty, reveal the state of nature, and implement the Condorcet winner. We demonstrate that this implementation result requires (at most) two voting stages regardless of the number of states or the number of alternatives. We also show that implementation requires a conditional privilege for a small representative subset of the population.

Suggested Citation

  • Volker Britz & Hans Gersbach, 2020. "Information sharing in democratic mechanisms," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(2), pages 547-577, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jogath:v:49:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s00182-020-00708-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s00182-020-00708-2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Volker Britz & Hans Gersbach, 2021. "Pendular Voting," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 21/350, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    2. Hans Gersbach, 2022. "New Forms of Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 10134, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Democratic mechanisms; Polling; Sampling; Public goods; Voting; Information sharing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General

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