Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants

Alessandra Casella, Jean-François Laslier and Antonin Macé

Games and Economic Behavior, 2017, vol. 106, issue C, 239-259

Abstract: In polarized committees, majority voting disenfranchises the minority. Allowing voters to spend freely a fixed budget of votes over multiple issues restores some minority power. However, it also creates a complex strategic scenario: a hide-and-seek game between majority and minority voters that corresponds to a decentralized version of the Colonel Blotto game. We offer theoretical results and bring the game to the laboratory. The minority wins as frequently as theory predicts, despite subjects deviating from equilibrium strategies. Because subjects understand the logic of the game — minority voters must concentrate votes unpredictably — the exact choices are of secondary importance, a result that vouches for the robustness of the voting rule to strategic mistakes.

Keywords: Storable Votes; Polarization; Colonel Blotto; Tyranny of the majority; Committees; Voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825617301811
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants (2017)
Working Paper: Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants (2017)
Working Paper: Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants (2016)
Working Paper: Democracy for Polarized Committees. The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants (2016)
Working Paper: Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants (2016)
Working Paper: Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants (2016)
Working Paper: Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:106:y:2017:i:c:p:239-259

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2017.10.009

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().