Voting Situations Research Articles

On status quo bias and the existence of Condorcet cycles in binary voting situations

On status quo bias and the existence of Condorcet cycles in binary voting situations

Indices of Criticality in Simple Games

Power indices in simple games measure the relevance of a player through her ability in being critical, i.e. essential for a coalition to win. We introduce new indices that measure the power of a player in being decisive through the collaboration of other players. We study the behavior of these criticality indices to compare the power of different players within a single voting situation, and that of the same player with varying weight across different voting situations. In both cases we establish monotonicity results in line with those of Turnovec [1998]. Finally, we examine which properties characterizing the indices of Shapley–Shubik and Banzhaf are shared by these new indices.

The Uncovered Set and the Core: Cox's Result Revisited

In this work first it is shown, in contradiction to the well-known claim in Cox (1987), that the uncovered set in a multidimensional spatial voting situation (under the usual regularity conditions) does not necessarily coincide with the core even when the core is singleton: in particular, the posited coincidence result, while true for an odd number of voters, may cease to be true when the number of voters is even. Second we provide a characterisation result for the case with an even number of voters: a singleton core is the uncovered set in this case if and only if the unique element in the core is the Condorcet winner.

A multi-criteria approach for assigning weights in voting systems

Following a new analytical orientation, this paper proposes an approach for investigating group versus individual trade-offs in general voting situations. From specific particularizations of a general family of p-norms, three social decision rules have been derived. These rules trigger three different systems of weights in the voting system. Once the three rules were obtained and the rationale underlying them justified, a compromise framework integrating all the rules was formulated. The compromise framework is computationally based on goal programming. In this way, it is possible to establish directly trade-offs and balance compromise solutions between the three social rules. Thus, not only is the weighted voting system formulated within a theoretically sound framework, but the applicability of the approach to real political situations is also more flexible and pragmatic.

Modified indices of political power: a case study of a few parliaments

According to yes–no voting systems, players (e.g., parties in a parliament) have some influence on making some decisions. In formal voting situations, taking into account that a majority vote is needed for making a decision, the question of political power of parties can be considered. There are some well-known indices of political power e.g., the Shapley–Shubik index, the Banzhaf index, the Johnston index, the Deegan–Packel index. In order to take into account different political nature of the parties, as the main factor for forming a winning coalition i.e., a parliamentary majority, we give a modification of the power indices. For the purpose of comparison of these indices of political power from the empirical point of view, we consider the indices of power in some cases, i.e., in relation to a few parliaments.

Asymptotic vulnerability of positional voting rules to coalitional manipulation

Voting rule performances are sometimes evaluated according to their respective resistances to allow profitable misrepresentation of individual preferences. This seems to be a hard task when scoring systems with possibly non integer weights are involved. In this paper, it is shown how one can still obtain asymptotic results in these settings. Our analysis for three-candidate elections provides a characterization of unstable voting situations at which a positional voting rule is manipulable by some coalition not larger than an arbitrary proportion of the electorate. This allows us to address a conjecture by Pritchard and Wilson (2007). That is, under the Impartial Anonymous Culture (IAC), the plurality rule asymptotically minimizes the vulnerability to coalitional manipulation when the size of the manipulating coalition is unrestricted. This later result is no longer valid when only manipulation by small coalitions is considered: now, the Borda rule tends to outperform other rules. Furthermore, the vulnerability of a positional voting rule to coalitional manipulation is not affected by increasing the size of the manipulating coalition from 0.5 to 1.

Strategic Behavior in Exhaustive Ballot Voting: What Can We Learn from the FIFA World Cup 2018 and 2022 Host Elections?

There are many allegations about whether FIFA world cup host countries were chosen honestly or not. We analyse the results of the FIFA Executive Committee voting and reconstruct the set of possible voting situations compatible with the results of each stage. In both elections, we identify strategic behaviour and then analyse the results for honest voting under all compatible voting situations. For the 2018 FIFA world cup election Russia is chosen for all profiles. For the 2022 elections the result depends on the preferences of the FIFA president Sepp Blatter who served as a tie-breaker. If Sepp Blatter prefers Qatar over South Korea and Japan, then Qatar would have been chosen for all profiles. Otherwise there are the possibility that South Korea or Japan would have been chosen as the 2022 host country. Another fact is that if we consider possible vote buying, then it is shown, that the bribery of at least 2 committee members would have been required to guarantee winning of Russia bid and at least 1 member for Qatar.

Voting power and decision making in environmental committees: The case of French water agencies

Abstract I employ different concepts of voting power to analyze how the composition of environmental committees and voting rules relate to the voting power of different decision makers in different voting situations. I demonstrate the use of the concepts on data for French river basin committees over the period 1987–2007. In the second part of the paper I discuss how the existing tools and methods can be adapted to examine the problem of fair representation of different interests within environmental committees. The analysis brings relevant insights to the recent water policy debates in France.

Reality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects for Salient and Contested Policy Issues

A large literature argues that public opinion is vulnerable to various types of framing and cue effects. However, we lack evidence on whether existing findings, which are typically based on lab experiments involving low-salience issues, travel to salient and contentious political issues in real-world voting situations. We examine the relative importance of issue frames, partisan cues, and their interaction for opinion formation using a survey experiment conducted around a highly politicized referendum on immigration policy in Switzerland. We find that voters responded to frames and cues, regardless of their direction, by increasing support for the position that is in line with their pre-existing partisan attachment. This reinforcement effect was most visible among low knowledgeable voters that identified with the party that owned the issue. These results support some of the previous findings in the political communication literature, but at the same time also point toward possible limits to framing effects in the context of salient and contested policy issues.

Manipulability of Aggregation Procedures in Impartial Anonymous Culture

Abstract Aleskerov et al. [1] , [2] estimated the degree of manipulability for the case of multi-valued choice (without using any tie-breaking rule) and for Impartial Culture (IC). In our paper, we address the similar question for the multi-valued choice and for Impartial Anonymous Culture (IAC). We use Nitzan-Kelly's (NK) index to estimate the degree of manipulability, which is calculated as the share of all manipulable voting situations, and calculate indices for 3 alternatives and up to 10000 voters. We have found that for the case of 3 alternatives Nanson's procedure shows the best results. Hare's procedure shows close, but a bit higher results. The worst aggregation procedure in terms of manipulability is Plurality rule. Additionally, it turned out that NK indices for IAC are smaller than NK indices for IC.

The neuroeconomics of voting: Neural evidence of different sources of utility in voting.

Which motives drive the decision of a voter to approve or reject a policy proposal? The Public Choice literature distinguishes between instrumental and expressive voting motives. We investigated the importance of these motives by analyzing the patterns of neural activity in different voting situations. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment that investigates neural activation at the moment of voting and used the altruism scale proposed by Tankersley, Stowe, and Huettell (2007) to differentiate between altruists and nonaltruists. Nonaltruists showed neural activation patterns that were consistent with expressive voting motives. Among nonaltruists, we also observed activation patterns that point at egoistic instrumental motives. Both results are in line with the corresponding Public Choice literature. On the other hand, we found no evidence for expressive voting motives among altruists. Their neural activation pattern was generally much less conclusive with respect to the underlying motives.

Developing the aggregate empirical side of computational social choice

The aggregate empirical side of computational social choice has received relatively little attention. This paper provides a progress report on our on-going research project on statistical characterizations of the outcomes of vote-casting processes. We describe a statistical model that is capable of generating voting situations for three-candidate elections that have a distribution very similar to that of observed voting situations. We show that our simulated voting situations can provide interesting insights into the question of which voting rule is most likely to identify the best candidate.

How frequently do different voting rules encounter voting paradoxes in three-candidate elections?

We estimate the frequencies with which ten voting anomalies (ties and nine voting paradoxes) occur under 14 voting rules, using a statistical model that simulates voting situations that follow the same distribution as voting situations in actual elections. Thus the frequencies that we estimate from our simulated data are likely to be very close to the frequencies that would be observed in actual three-candidate elections. We find that two Condorcet-consistent voting rules do, the Black rule and the Nanson rule, encounter most paradoxes and ties less frequently than the other rules do, especially in elections with few voters. The Bucklin rule, the Plurality rule, and the Anti-plurality rule tend to perform worse than the other eleven rules, especially when the number of voters becomes large.

Reality Bites: The Limits of Framing Effects for Salient and Contested Policy Issues

A large literature argues that public opinion is vulnerable to various types of framing and cue effects. However, we lack evidence on whether existing findings, which are typically based on lab experiments involving low salience issues, travel to salient and contentious political issues in real-world voting situations. We examine the relative importance of issue frames, partisan cues, and their interaction for opinion formation using a survey experiment conducted around a highly politicized referendum on immigration policy in Switzerland. We find that voters responded to frames and cues, regardless of their direction, by increasing support for the position that is in line with their pre-existing partisan attachment. This reinforcement effect was most visible among low knowledge voters that identified with the party that owned the issue. These results support some of the previous findings in the political communication literature, but at the same time also point toward possible limits to framing effects in the context of salient and contested policy issues.

Forming Choice Preferences the Easy Way: Order and Familiarity Effects in Elections1

The present research examined the relation between choice preferences in elections and 2 peripheral cues: presentation order and familiarity. Relevant previous evidence concerns mainly voters' choices in political elections, where primacy effects were found (i.e., candidates listed earlier had an advantage over candidates listed subsequently). Also, some studies found recency effects in various competitions. However, evidence on the role of familiarity in voting preferences seems rather limited. In 3 studies, data from political and nonpolitical elections were examined with respect to order and familiarity effects. All studies demonstrated the concurrent presence of order and familiarity effects. The findings are viewed in relation to theoretical ideas pertaining to heuristic processing and to implications applying to voting situations.

Personality and Self-regulation as Determinants of Rational Decision Making in a Political Voting Situation

The association of self-regulation and personality factors with rational decision making was investigated using an experimental model of political voting. The results revealed different sets of personality characteristics for rational and emotional voters. A self-regulation/personality typology of decision making was then constructed, and traits representing self-regulation, cognition, and personality were examined as predispositions toward rational decision making. As a result, specific connections among these variables were uncovered, through which the primary role of the conscious self-regulation system in the management of rational decision making in a political voting context was established.

Comments on: Transversality of the Shapley value

It is a good tradition of TOP to invite experts in OR and game theory to write a surveyon a special topic. These papers are also interesting for readers who are not specialistsin the treated field but may have influence on their further research. For cooperativegame theory, in the past, there were survey papers on the compromise value (Tijsand Otten 1993) and on Operations Research Games (Borm et al. 2001), and thesepapers were frequently cited and inspired to new research. Now here is the paper byMoretti and Patrone on the Shapley value. As we can see in their list of references,in the fifty five years of the existence of the Shapley value, there have been not onlymany follow ups but also many surveys. This paper also gives a good survey of themany theoretical contributions in the past. But the feature of this survey is the eyefor applications. Many applications are well known just as the Shapley–Shubik indexin voting situations and the Baker–Thompson rule in landing fee problems, whereusers of a piece of the strip contribute equally to the costs. However, contributionsof the Shapley value in reliability theory and genetics are much less known. Theyare treated in this paper extensively, and they may inspire scientists in different otherdisciplines also to apply the Shapley value in new interactive situations. I think theauthors did an excellent job in writing a beautiful survey of topics around the Shapleyvalue and I expect that, inspired by this work, new practical situations will be foundwhere Shapleys ideas can again be useful.

Voting on public goods in multi-jurisdictional systems

This paper studies an economy with multiple jurisdictions, each producing a (pure) public good. Decisions are taken by means of a centralized voting procedure, to which individual agents participate and whose rules are defined with respect to the jurisdictional structure. In particular, a winning alternative must gain the support of a given number of jurisdictions. A well-known example is qualified majority rules. We establish condition on voting rules for the set of voting equilibria to coincide with the set of ratio equilibria of the economy, under alternative assumptions on the possibility of transfers across jurisdictions. We employ the obtained results to characterize the equilibria of two-stage voting situations, in which jurisdictional delegates vote instructed by internal committees.

Strategic Voting in Post-Communist Democracy?

The absence of strategic voting in new democracies represents a potential threat to democratic consolidation because it could inhibit the development of a stable party system. Yet can we expect that citizens in new democracies have developed the skills associated with strategic voting in democratic elections? Based on evidence from Hungary, a post-communist democracy, this article suggests that citizens in new democracies respond to strategic voting situations in a fashion consistent with conventional theories of strategic voting. Analysis of Hungarian voting statistics over the past three national elections indicates that voters, consistent with strategic voting theories, vigorously penalized smaller parties thereby contributing to the rapid decline in the number of effective parties competing in Hungarian elections. We argue that strategic voting occurs in two stages: (1) recognition of a ‘wasted-vote’ situation and (2) strategic response to that situation.

A Note on the Probability of Having a Strong Condorcet Winner

In an election, a strong Condorcet winner is a candidate who is top-ranked by more than 50% of the voters. The purpose of this note is to provide some algebraic representations for the probability of having a strong Condorcet winner in three-candidate elections. Three alternative procedures for generating voting situations are considered: the Impartial Culture condition, the Impartial Anonymous Culture condition and the Maximal Culture condition. It turns out that the conclusions we obtain strongly depend on the way for generating voting situations.