IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/vcontributions.2y2003i1n13.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forming Voting Blocs and Coalitions as a Prisoner's Dilemma: A Possible Theoretical Explanation for Political Instability

Author

Listed:
  • Gelman Andrew

    (Department of Statistics, Columbia University)

Abstract

Individuals in a committee or election can increase their voting power by forming coalitions. This behavior is shown here to yield a prisoner's dilemma, in which a subset of voters can increase their power, while reducing average voting power for the electorate as a whole. This is an unusual form of the prisoner's dilemma in that cooperation is the selfish act that hurts the larger group. Under a simple model, the privately optimal coalition size is approximately 1.4 times the square root of the number of voters. When voters' preferences are allowed to differ, coalitions form only if voters are approximately politically balanced. We propose a dynamic view of coalitions, in which groups of voters choose of their own free will to form and disband coalitions, in a continuing struggle to maintain their voting power. This is potentially an endogenous mechanism for political instability, even in a world where individuals' (probabilistic) preferences are fixed and known.

Suggested Citation

  • Gelman Andrew, 2003. "Forming Voting Blocs and Coalitions as a Prisoner's Dilemma: A Possible Theoretical Explanation for Political Instability," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-14, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:contributions.2:y:2003:i:1:n:13
    DOI: 10.2202/1538-0645.1185
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0645.1185
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1538-0645.1185?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    2. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2003:i:2:p:1-5 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Dan S. Felsenthal & Moshé Machover, 1998. "The Measurement of Voting Power," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1489, December.
    4. Shapley, L. S. & Shubik, Martin, 1954. "A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(3), pages 787-792, September.
    5. Van Kolpin, 2003. "Voting Power Under Uniform Representation," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(2), pages 1-5.
    6. Peter Bernholz, 1982. "Externalities as a Necessary Condition for Cyclical Social Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(4), pages 699-705.
    7. Donal G. Saari & Katri K. Sieberg, 1999. "Some Surprising Properties of Power Indices," Discussion Papers 1271, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    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. Kikuchi, Kazuya & Koriyama, Yukio, 2023. "The winner-take-all dilemma," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 18(3), July.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:10:y:2015:i:6:p:511-537 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Jon X. Eguia, 2006. "United We Vote," Working Papers 2006.9, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    4. Eguia, Jon X., 2011. "Voting blocs, party discipline and party formation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 111-135, September.
    5. Jon X. Eguia, 2007. "United We Vote," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(4), pages 607-639, August.
    6. Daniel A. DeCaro & Marco A. Janssen & Allen Lee, 2015. "Synergistic effects of voting and enforcement on internalized motivation to cooperate in a resource dilemma," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(6), pages 511-537, November.

    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. Monisankar Bishnu & Sonali Roy, 2012. "Hierarchy of players in swap robust voting games," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(1), pages 11-22, January.
    2. Bernholz, Peter, 1997. "Property rights, contracts, cyclical social preferences and the Coase theorem: A synthesis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 419-442, September.
    3. Zaporozhets, Vera & García-Valiñas, María & Kurz, Sascha, 2016. "Key drivers of EU budget allocation: Does power matter?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 57-70.
    4. Le Breton, Michel & Montero, Maria & Zaporozhets, Vera, 2012. "Voting power in the EU council of ministers and fair decision making in distributive politics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 159-173.
    5. Serguei Kaniovski, 2008. "The exact bias of the Banzhaf measure of power when votes are neither equiprobable nor independent," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 281-300, August.
    6. Manfred Holler & Rie Ono & Frank Steffen, 2001. "Constrained Monotonicity and the Measurement of Power," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 383-395, June.
    7. Michel Le Breton & Dominique Lepelley & Antonin Macé & Vincent Merlin, 2017. "Le mécanisme optimal de vote au sein du conseil des représentants d’un système fédéral," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 93(1-2), pages 203-248.
    8. Laurent, Thibault & Le Breton, Michel & Lepelley, Dominique & de Mouzon, Olivier, 2017. "Exploring the Effects on the Electoral College of National and Regional Popular Vote Interstate Compact: An Electoral Engineering Perspective," TSE Working Papers 17-861, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised May 2018.
    9. Crespi, R. & Renneboog, L.D.R., 2000. "United we stand : Corporate Monitoring by Shareholder Coalitions in the UK," Other publications TiSEM 226b4a58-7d8a-436c-8376-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Fabrice Barthelemy & Mathieu Martin, 2011. "A Comparison Between the Methods of Apportionment Using Power Indices: the Case of the US Presidential Elections," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 101-102, pages 87-106.
    11. Paul Schure & Amy Verdun, 2008. "Legislative Bargaining in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 9(4), pages 459-486, December.
    12. Ori Haimanko, 2019. "Composition independence in compound games: a characterization of the Banzhaf power index and the Banzhaf value," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(3), pages 755-768, September.
    13. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2006. "The Inter-Institutional Distribution of Power in EU Codecision," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 27(1), pages 129-154, August.
    14. Nicola Maaser & Alexander Mayer, 2016. "Codecision in context: implications for the balance of power in the EU," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 213-237, January.
    15. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Trojanowski, G., 2005. "Patterns in Payout Policy and Payout Channel Choice of UK Firms in the 1990s," Discussion Paper 2005-002, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    16. Madeleine Hosli & Rebecca Moody & Bryan O’Donovan & Serguei Kaniovski & Anna Little, 2011. "Squaring the circle? Collective and distributive effects of United Nations Security Council reform," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 163-187, July.
    17. Zaporozhets, Vera, 2015. "Power Distribution in French River Basin Committees," TSE Working Papers 15-558, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    18. Leech, D., 2000. "Members' Voting Power in the Governance of the International Monetary Fund," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 583, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    19. Poulsen, Thomas, 2008. "Investment decisions with benefits of control," Finance Research Group Working Papers F-2008-02, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Business Studies.
    20. Maria Montero & Martin Sefton & Ping Zhang, 2008. "Enlargement and the balance of power: an experimental study," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(1), pages 69-87, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:bpj:bejeap:v:contributions.2:y:2003:i:1:n:13. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    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.