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Voting as a Lottery

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Abstract

Voting is a lottery in which an individual who is uncertain about how the others vote wins if she belongs to the majority or loses if she falls into the minority. The risk of losing can be reduced by increasing the majority threshold. This however has the negative effect of also lowering the chance to win. We find that an individual prefers higher majority thresholds when she is more risk averse, less powerful,or less optimistic about the chance that others will vote like her. Defacto, raising the majority threshold is a form of protection against the higher risk of being tyrannized by an unfavorable majority. We include these preferences for majority thresholds in a Nash bargaining game that describes constitutional negotiations over voting rules. Individuals that largely avert the risk of being tyrannized behave reluctantly during negotiations, and succeed in getting higher protection through a threshold raise.

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Paper provided by ISLA, Centre for research on Latin American Studies and Transition Economies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy in its series ISLA Working Papers with number 28.

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Length: 35 pages
Date of creation: May 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:slp:islawp:islawp28
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Keywords: majority rule; supermajority; risk aversion; weighted votes; constitutions;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
  • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

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Cited by:

  1. Giuseppe Attanasi, Luca Corazzini, Nikolaos Georgantzis, Francesco Passarelli., 2009. "Risk Aversion, Over-Confidence and Private Information as Determinants of Majority Thresholds," ISLA Working Papers 34, ISLA, Centre for research on Latin American Studies and Transition Economies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
  2. Francesco Passarelli, 2011. "Risky Political Changes: Rational Choice vs Prospect Theory," ISLA Working Papers 39, ISLA, Centre for research on Latin American Studies and Transition Economies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.

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