Communication and Information in Games of Collective Decision: A Survey of Experimental Results

We survey selectively lab experiments on voting games including pre-play activities such as communication and other forms of information release. We focus on a few areas that have received much attention in the last few decades, including costly voting and other collective action problems, coordination in elections with more than two alternatives, electoral competition and democratic accountability with imperfect Information, and legislative bargaining. We identify three forces that appear to be operating when communication is allowed: equilibrium, efficiency, and (underlying both) coordination.