Endogenous Enfranchisement When Groups' Preferences Conflict
In their seminal paper, Aumann, Kurz, and Neyman found the surprising result that the choice of levels of public goods in a democracy is not affected by the distribution of voting rights. This implies that groups of individuals may not value the franchise. This conclusion, however, does not correspond to what we commonly observe. We propose a new model to address the question of enfranchisement. The main feature of our model is that it takes into account natural affinities, such as religion or class, that may exist between voters. This allows us to show that while individuals may not value the vote, they nonetheless value the franchise. We also show that in the presence of nonconvexities, it is more likely that the group in power will grant the franchise when preferences are severely opposed.
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Volume (Year): 109 (2001)
Issue (Month): 1 (February)
Pages: 79-102
| Handle: | RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:109:y:2001:i:1:p:79-102 |
| Contact details of provider: | Web page: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE/
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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135-135.
- Lawrence Kenny, 1978. "The collective allocation of commodities in a democratic society: a generalization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 117-120, September.
- John Conley & Myrna H. Wooders & Ali Toossi, 2001.
"Evolution & Voting: How Nature Makes us Public Spirited,"
Economics Bulletin,
AccessEcon, vol. 28(24), pages 1.
- Conley, John P. & Toossi, Ali & Wooders, Myrna, 2001. "Evolution & voting : how nature makes us public spirited," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 601, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
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