Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP12672
Authors: Hans Gersbach; Kamali Wickramage
Abstract: We introduce 'Balanced Voting', a voting scheme tailored to fundamental societal decisions. It works as follows: Citizens may abstain from voting on a fundamental direction in a first stage. This guarantees the voting right in a second voting stage on the variants of the fundamental direction chosen in the first. All losers from the first stage also obtain voting rights in the second stage, while winners do not. We develop a model with two fundamental directions and variants of these directions. Information about the preferences is private. We identify circumstances under which Balanced Voting performs well with regard to utilitarian welfare and Pareto dominance. We discuss the robustness of the results, procedural rules to implement the voting scheme, and extensions. Moreover, we provide several examples, such as the US presidential election, for which the scheme could be applied.
Keywords: balanced voting; fundamental decision; tyranny of majority; minority protection
JEL Codes: D7
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Balanced Voting (BV) (D72) | Better Policy Decisions (D78) |
| Balanced Voting (BV) (D72) | Higher Expected Social Welfare (D69) |
| Preference Intensity (D11) | Voting Behavior (D72) |
| Voting Rules Applied (K16) | Effectiveness of Voting Scheme (D72) |
| Large Voting Body (D72) | Higher Expected Social Welfare (D69) |
| Conditions for BV Performance (L25) | Better Outcomes (I14) |
| BV Mitigates Tyranny of Majority (D72) | Better Representation of Minority Preferences (D79) |