IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ven/wpaper/201802.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • M. Cristina Molinari

    (Department of Economics, 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. Such 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 in two factions, we characterise the win probability of the minority and study how it varies with the electoral college size and the winning threshold. We argue that these features promoted a more equitable allocation of political representation and thus may have contributed to the political stability of the Republic of Venice.

Suggested Citation

  • M. Cristina Molinari, 2018. "How the Republic of Venice chose its Doge: Lot-based elections and supermajority rule," Working Papers 2018:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    • Handle: RePEc:ven:wpaper:2018:02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unive.it/pag/fileadmin/user_upload/dipartimenti/economia/doc/Pubblicazioni_scientifiche/working_papers/2018/WP_DSE_molinari_02_18.pdf
    File Function: First version, anno
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    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.
    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. 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".

    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. George Tridimas, 2018. "On Sortition. Comment on “Proposals for a Democracy of the Future” by Bruno Frey," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 91-100, June.
    2. Fidrmuc, Jana P. & Jacob, Marcus, 2010. "Culture, agency costs, and dividends," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 321-339, September.
    3. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10284 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Coşgel, Metin M. & Miceli, Thomas J. & Rubin, Jared, 2012. "The political economy of mass printing: Legitimacy and technological change in the Ottoman Empire," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 357-371.
    5. Hans Gersbach, 2004. "Fiscal Constitutions," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 3-25, March.
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iepsg269m is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Andrea Asoni, 2008. "Protection Of Property Rights And Growth As Political Equilibria," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 953-987, December.
    8. Karla Hoff & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2010. "Equilibrium Fictions: A Cognitive Approach to Societal Rigidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 141-146, May.
    9. Beckert, Jens & Ebbinghaus, Bernhard & Hassel, Anke & Manow, Philip (ed.), 2006. "Transformationen des Kapitalismus: Festschrift für Wolfgang Streeck zum sechzigsten Geburtstag," Schriften aus dem Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Köln, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, volume 57, number 57.
    10. Hervé Crès & Mich Tvede, 2001. "Proxy fights in incomplete markets: when majority voting and sidepayments are equivalent," Sciences Po publications 726/2001, Sciences Po.
    11. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10286 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Stutzer Alois & Frey Bruno S., 2006. "Making International Organizations More Democratic," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(3), pages 305-330, January.
    13. Grossman, Sanford J. & Hart, Oliver D., 1988. "One share-one vote and the market for corporate control," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 175-202, January.
    14. Kirchgassner, Gebhard, 2000. "Probabilistic Voting and Equilibrium: An Impossibility Result," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(1-2), pages 35-48, April.
    15. Licht Amir N., 2008. "Social Norms and the Law: Why Peoples Obey the Law," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(3), pages 715-750, December.
    16. Stephan Michel & Ignacio N. Cofone, 2017. "Majority Rules in Constitutional Referendums," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(3), pages 402-424, August.
    17. Mich Tvede & Hervé Crés, 2005. "Voting in assemblies of shareholders and incomplete markets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 26(4), pages 887-906, November.
    18. Hervé Crès & M. Utku Ünver, 2010. "Ideology and Existence of 50%-Majority Equilibria in Multidimensional Spatial Voting Models," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 22(4), pages 431-444, October.
    19. Hervé Crès, 2000. "Aggregation of Coarse Preferences," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01064879, HAL.
    20. Stefan Krasa & Mattias Polborn, 2007. "Majority-efficiency and Competition-efficiency in a Binary Policy Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 1958, CESifo.
    21. Pablo Bandeira, 2009. "Instituciones y desarrollo económico. Un marco conceptual," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 11(20), pages 355-373, January-J.
    22. Cecchi, Francesco & Melesse, Mequanint Biset, 2016. "Formal law and customary change: A lab-in-field experiment in Ethiopia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 67-85.
    23. Walkowitz, Gari & Weiss, Arne R., 2017. "“Read my lips! (but only if I was elected)!” Experimental evidence on the effects of electoral competition on promises, shirking and trust," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 348-367.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Voting; minorities' protection; probabilistic proportional representation;
    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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ven:wpaper:2018:02. 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: Geraldine Ludbrook (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dsvenit.html .

    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.