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Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting

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Listed:
  • Victoria Mooers
  • Joseph Campbell
  • Alessandra Casella
  • Lucas de Lara
  • Dilip Ravindran

Abstract

Proponents of participatory democracy praise Liquid Democracy: decisions are taken by referendum, but voters delegate their votes freely. When better informed voters are present, delegation can increase the probability of a correct decision. However, delegation must be used sparely because it reduces the information aggregated through voting. In two different experiments, we find that delegation underperforms both universal majority voting and the simpler option of abstention. In a tightly controlled lab experiment where the subjects' precision of information is conveyed in precise mathematical terms and very salient, the result is due to overdelegation. In a perceptual task run online where the precision of information is not known precisely, delegation remains very high and again underperforms both majority voting and abstention. In addition, subjects substantially overestimate the precision of the better informed voters, underlining that Liquid Democracy is fragile to multiple sources of noise. The paper makes an innovative methodological contribution by combining two very different experimental procedures: the study of voting rules would benefit from complementing controlled experiments with known precision of information with tests under ambiguity, a realistic assumption in many voting situations.

Suggested Citation

  • Victoria Mooers & Joseph Campbell & Alessandra Casella & Lucas de Lara & Dilip Ravindran, 2022. "Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting," Papers 2212.09715, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2212.09715
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Kirneva Margarita & N'u~nez Mat'ias, 2023. "Legitimacy of collective decisions: a mechanism design approach," Papers 2302.09548, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    2. Dhillon, Amrita & Kotsialou, Grammateia & Xefteris, Dimitris, 2021. "Information Aggregation with Delegation of Votes," SocArXiv ubk7p, Center for Open Science.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

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