eprintid: 27268
rev_number: 24
eprint_status: archive
userid: 3114
dir: disk0/00/02/72/68
datestamp: 2019-10-16 12:33:40
lastmod: 2019-11-05 15:09:33
status_changed: 2019-10-16 12:33:40
type: workingPaper
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Aguiar-Conraria, Luís
creators_name: Magalhães, Pedro C.
creators_name: Vanberg, Christoph A.
title: What are the best quorum rules? A laboratory Investigation
subjects: ddc-330
divisions: i-181000
keywords: election design , participation quorum , approval quorum , laboratory experiment
abstract: Many political systems with direct democracy mechanisms have adopted rules preventing decisions from being made by simple majority rule. The device most commonly added to majority rule in national is a quorum requirement. The two most common are the participation and the approval quora. Such rules are a response to three major concerns: the legitimacy of the referendum outcome, its representativeness (the concern with the outcome representing the will of the whole electorate), and protection of minorities regarding issues that should demand a broad consensus. Guided by a pivotal voter model, we conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate the performance of different quora in reaching such goals. We introduce two main innovations in relation to previous work on the topic. First, part of the electorate goes to the polls out of a sense of civic duty. Second, we test the performance of a different quorum, the rejection quorum, recently proposed in the literature. We conclude that, depending on the preferred criterion, either the approval or the rejection quorum is to be preferred.
date: 2019-10
id_scheme: DOI
id_number: 10.11588/heidok.00027268
schriftenreihe_cluster_id: sr-3
schriftenreihe_order: 0671
ppn_swb: 1679744836
own_urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-272680
language: eng
bibsort: AGUIARCONRWHATARETHE201910
full_text_status: public
series: Discussion Paper Series / University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics
volume: 0671
place_of_pub: Heidelberg
pages: 31
citation:   Aguiar-Conraria, Luís ; Magalhães, Pedro C. ; Vanberg, Christoph A.  (2019) What are the best quorum rules? A laboratory Investigation.  [Working paper]     
document_url: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/27268/5/Aguiar_2019.pdf