Market For Votes Research Articles

The effect of the secret ballot on voter turnout rates

Secrecy in the voting process eliminated an important motivation for voting. No longer able to verify the voters' choices, political parties stopped offering payments in return for votes. Within the rational voter framework, it will be shown that these payments were a prime impetus for people to vote. Without a vote market to cover their voting costs, many voters were rational to stay away from the polls.

Dealing in Green Votes: France, 1993

Conditions In The Market For Votes Have Changed throughout Europe in recent years. Markets which for much of the post-war period were characterized chiefly by voter loyalty to governing parties and plausible challengers to them, have latterly been subject to significant elements of uncertainty and fragmentation. Not only have votes been switched with increasing rapidity, they have also been cast increasingly for parties which lie outside hitherto established frameworks of electoral politics. Perceived governing incompetence has dearly been a major factor in this transformation, but broader social change has also played a part. The consequence is that European electoral markets present increasingly open terrain for party political competition. Not for many years have possibilities for market entrance been as good.

Self-Interest, Ideology, and Logrolling in Congressional Voting

LAWS may be passed because of self-interest or because of ideology. All national laws are ultimately passed by Congress; therefore, an analysis of the factors which determine the way in which congressmen vote can be used to determine the extent to which each of these factors is involved in passage of legislation. Because of the development of statistical tools such as logit analysis, which enable the analyst to handle situations in which the dependent variable is dichotomous, determinants of voting have recently been examined using roll-call voting data. The basic technique in this work has been to define the vote by a congressman on a bill as the dichotomous dependent variable and to use economic factors associated with the district as independent variables. But if this research is to proceed, it is necessary to separate out the factors-self-interest, logrolling, and ideology-which actually determine voting. This separation is the purpose of this paper. Kau and Rubin' and Silberman and Durden2 have analyzed voting on minimum wages; Danielsen and Rubin3 have examined voting on energy issues; Davis and Jackson4 have examined voting on income redistribution; and Kau and Rubins have examined the effect of public-interest lobbies such as Common Cause on the legislative process. Thus, statistical analysis of roll-call voting has been, and is likely to continue to be, a useful tool. This work in economics has differed somewhat from related work by political