Working Paper: NBER ID: w22231
Authors: Alessandra Casella; Jean François Laslier; Antonin Mac
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: polarized committees; Storable Votes; Colonel Blotto game; voting mechanisms
JEL Codes: C72; C92; D71
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| minority concentrates votes randomly (D79) | positive expected fraction of victories (C46) |
| strategic interaction between majority and minority voters (D79) | determining outcomes (C52) |
| SV mechanism is robust to strategic mistakes (C73) | positive expected fraction of minority victories (D79) |
| Storable Votes (SV) mechanism (D79) | minority can occasionally prevail in polarized committees (D72) |
| deviations from equilibrium strategies (D51) | minority's chances of winning (J15) |