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Balanced voting

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  • Gersbach, Hans
  • Wickramage, Kamali

Abstract

We introduce ‘Balanced Voting’, a voting scheme tailored to fundamental societal decisions. It works as follows: Citizens may abstain from voting on a fundamental direction in a first stage. This guarantees the voting right in a second voting stage on the variants of the fundamental direction chosen in the first. All ‘losers’ from the first stage also obtain voting rights in the second stage, while ‘winners’ do not. We develop a model with two fundamental directions and variants of these directions. Information about the preferences is private. We identify circumstances under which Balanced Voting performs well with regard to utilitarian welfare and Pareto dominance. We discuss the robustness of the results, procedural rules to implement the voting scheme, and extensions. Moreover, we provide several examples for which the scheme might be applied.

Suggested Citation

  • Gersbach, Hans & Wickramage, Kamali, 2021. "Balanced voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 203-229.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:matsoc:v:113:y:2021:i:c:p:203-229
    DOI: 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2021.05.002
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    1. Alessandra Casella & Thomas Palfrey & Raymond Riezman, 2013. "Minorities and Storable Votes," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 15, pages 247-282, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Balanced voting; Fundamental decision; Tyranny of majority; Minority protection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making

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