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Minority Voting and Long-term Decisions

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  • Theresa Fahrenberger
  • Hans Gersbach

Abstract

In this paper we propose minority voting as a scheme that can partially protect individuals from the risk of repeated exploitation. We consider a committee that meets twice to decide about projects where the first-period project may have a long-lasting impact. In the first period a simple open majority voting scheme takes place. Voting splits the committee into three groups: voting winners, voting losers, and absentees. Under minority voting only voting losers keep the voting right in the second period. We show that as soon as absolute risk aversion exceeds a threshold value minority voting is superior to repeated application of the simple majority rule.

Suggested Citation

  • Theresa Fahrenberger & Hans Gersbach, 2008. "Minority Voting and Long-term Decisions," CESifo Working Paper Series 2198, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2198
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Potrafke, Niklas, 2013. "Minority positions in the German Council of Economic Experts: A political economic analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 180-187.
    2. Balistreri, Edward J. & Hillberry, Russell H. & Rutherford, Thomas F., 2011. "Structural estimation and solution of international trade models with heterogeneous firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 95-108, March.
    3. Gersbach, Hans, 2009. "Minority voting and public project provision," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-40.
    4. Gersbach, Hans & Wickramage, Kamali, 2021. "Balanced voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 203-229.
    5. Gersbach, Hans & Tejada, Oriol, 2020. "Semi-flexible Majority Rules for Public Good Provision," CEPR Discussion Papers 15099, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Aleksei Y. Kondratev & Alexander S. Nesterov, 2020. "Measuring majority power and veto power of voting rules," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(1), pages 187-210, April.
    7. Gersbach, Hans, 2017. "Flexible Majority Rules in democracyville: A guided tour," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 37-43.
    8. Theresa Fahrenberger, 2009. "Short-term Deviations from Simple Majority Voting," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 09/115, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    9. Fahrenberger, Theresa C. & Gersbach, Hans, 2012. "Preferences for harmony and minority voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-13.
    10. Hans Gersbach, 2022. "New Forms of Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 10134, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    voting; minority; durable decision; risk aversion; tyranny of majority rules;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

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