Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bge/wpaper/57.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Choosing How to Choose: Self-Stable Majority Rules and Constitutions

Author

Listed:
  • Salvador Barberà
  • Matthew O. Jackson
Abstract
Constitutional arrangements affect the decisions made by a society. We study how this effect leads to preferences of citizens over constitutions; and ultimately how this has a feedback that determines which constitutions can survive in a given society. Constitutions are stylized here, to consist of a voting rule for ordinary business and possibly different voting rule for making changes to the constitution. We define an equilibrium notion for constitutions, called self-stability, whereby under the rules of a self-stable constitution, the society would not vote to change the constitution. We argue that only self-stable constitutions will endure. We prove that self-stable constitutions always exist, but that most constitutions (even very prominent ones) may not be self-stable for some societies. We show that constitutions where the voting rule used to amend the constitution is the same as the voting rule used for ordinary business are dangerously simplistic, and there are (many) societies for which no such constitution is self-stable rule. We conclude with a characterization of the set of self-stable constitutions that use majority rule for ordinary business.

Suggested Citation

  • Salvador Barberà & Matthew O. Jackson, 2003. "Choosing How to Choose: Self-Stable Majority Rules and Constitutions," Working Papers 57, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:57
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.barcelonagse.eu/sites/default/files/working_paper_pdfs/57.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "Political economics and macroeconomic policy," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1397-1482, Elsevier.
    2. Philippe Aghion & Alberto Alesina & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Endogenous Political Institutions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 565-611.
    3. Semih Koray, 2000. "Self-Selective Social Choice Functions Verify Arrow and Gibbarad- Satterthwaite Theorems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(4), pages 981-996, July.
    4. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    5. Caplin, Andrew S & Nalebuff, Barry J, 1988. "On 64%-Majority Rule," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(4), pages 787-814, July.
    6. Grandmont, Jean-Michel, 1978. "Intermediate Preferences and the Majority Rule," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(2), pages 317-330, March.
    7. Torsten Persson, 2002. "Do Political Institutions Shape Economic Policy?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 883-905, May.
    8. Matthias Messner & Mattias K. Polborn, 2004. "Voting on Majority Rules," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 115-132.
    9. Rae, Douglas W., 1969. "Decision-Rules and Individual Values in Constitutional Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(1), pages 40-56, March.
    10. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1996. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts," Discussion Papers 1170, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    11. Danilo Coelho, 2005. "Maximin choice of voting rules for committees," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 159-175, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:oup:qjecon:v:119:y:2004:i:3:p:1011-1048 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Philippe Aghion & Alberto Alesina & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Endogenous Political Institutions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 565-611.
    3. Hans Gersbach, 2002. "Democratic Mechanisms: Double Majority Rules and Flexible Agenda Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 749, CESifo.
    4. Giovanni Maggi & Massimo Morelli, 2006. "Self-Enforcing Voting in International Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1137-1158, September.
    5. Roger Lagunoff, 2004. "The Dynamic Reform of Political Institutions," Working Papers gueconwpa~04-04-07, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    6. Azrieli, Yaron & Kim, Semin, 2016. "On the self-(in)stability of weighted majority rules," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 376-389.
    7. Lagunoff, Roger, 2009. "Dynamic stability and reform of political institutions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 569-583, November.
    8. Tovey, Craig A., 2010. "The instability of instability of centered distributions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 53-73, January.
    9. Attanasi, Giuseppe & Corazzini, Luca & Passarelli, Francesco, 2017. "Voting as a lottery," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 129-137.
    10. Marco Faravelli & Priscilla Man, 2021. "Generalized majority rules: utilitarian welfare in large but finite populations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(1), pages 21-48, July.
    11. Roger Lagunoff, 2005. "Markov Equilibrium in Models of Dynamic Endogenous Political Institutions," Game Theory and Information 0501003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Mattias K. Polborn & Matthias Messner, 2008. "The option to wait in collective decisions," 2008 Meeting Papers 397, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Giulia Papini, 2023. "Majority Rule Determination and Uncertainty Aversion: A Critical Systematic Review," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 7(1), pages 19-24, November.
    14. Ernesto Dal Bo, 2002. "Supermajority Voting Rules: Balancing Commitment and Flexibility," Economics Series Working Papers 132, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    15. Paul Schure & Francesco Passerelli & David Scoones, 2007. "When the Powerful Drag Their Feet," Department Discussion Papers 0703, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    16. Dal Bo, Ernesto, 2006. "Committees with supermajority voting yield commitment with flexibility," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 573-599, May.
    17. Ulrich Erlenmaier & Hans Gersbach, 2001. "Flexible Majority Rules," CESifo Working Paper Series 464, CESifo.
    18. Daniel Cardona & Clara Ponsatí, 2008. "Bargaining one-dimensional policies and the efficiency of super majority rules," Working Papers 375, Barcelona School of Economics.
    19. Kwiek, Maksymilian, 2014. "Conclave," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 258-275.
    20. Gersbach, Hans & Siemers, Lars, 2005. "Can Democracy Educate a Society?," IZA Discussion Papers 1693, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    21. Messner, Matthias & Polborn, Mattias K., 2012. "The option to wait in collective decisions and optimal majority rules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(5), pages 524-540.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:57. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bruno Guallar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bargses.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.