scholarly journals Should Jurors Deliberate?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brishti Guha
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Binary Decision ◽  
Board Of Director ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
The Cost

AbstractDoes the accuracy of verdicts improve or worsen if individual jurors on a panel are barred from deliberating prior to casting their votes? I study this question in a model where jurors can choose to exert costly effort to improve the accuracy of their individual decisions. I find that, provided the cost of effort is not too large, it is better to allow jurors to deliberate if jury size exceeds a threshold. For panels smaller than this threshold, it is more effective to instruct jurors to vote on the basis of their private information, without deliberations, and to use a simple majority rule to determine the collective decision (regardless of the voting rule used with deliberations). The smaller the cost of paying attention, the larger the threshold above which the switch to allowing deliberations becomes optimal. However, if the unanimity rule had to be maintained under the no-deliberations system, it would be better to allow deliberation. The results apply to binary decision making in any committee where the committee members incur some effort in reviewing the evidence. Examples are arbitration panels and tenure and promotion committees and some board of director meetings on issues such as whether to dismiss a CEO. As an extension I consider the case where jurors differ in their costs of effort.

When Do Conflicting Parties Share Political Power?

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Battaglini ◽  
Lydia Mechtenberg
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Small Extent ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Proportional Rule ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Electoral Outcome ◽  
Costly Punishment ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Do So

AbstractWe conduct a laboratory experiment to study the incentives of a privileged group (the “yellows”) to share political power with another group (the “blues”). The yellows collectively choose the voting rule for a general election: a simple-majority rule that favors them, or a proportional rule. In two treatments, the blues can use a costly punishment option. We find that the yellows share power voluntarily only to a small extent, but they are more inclined to do so under the threat of punishment, despite the fact that punishments are not sub-game perfect. The blue group conditions punishments both on the voting rule and the electoral outcome.

Voting Procedures: A Summary Analysis

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannu Nurmi
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Research Tradition ◽  
Voting Procedures ◽  
Marquis De Condorcet ◽  
Condorcet Paradox

Roughly two centuries ago the Marquis de Condorcet and Chevalier Jean-Charles de Borda originated a research tradition – by no means a continuous one – that over the decades has produced results casting doubt on many widely used collective decision-making procedures. The phenomenon known as the Condorcet effect or the Condorcet paradox is the well-known problem of the simple majority rule. The paradox bearing the name of Borda is less commonly known, but it also relates to a procedure that is widely used, namely the plurality principle. Either one of these paradoxes is serious enough to make these procedures suspect unless one is convinced that the situations giving rise to these paradoxical features are extremely rare. In this article we review some voting procedures that have been introduced in the literature. We aim at giving a synthesis of the assessments of procedures with respect to various criteria.

scholarly journals Persuading Voters

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (11) ◽  
pp. 3590-3605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Alonso ◽  
Odilon CÂmara
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Optimal Experiment ◽  
Symmetric Information ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Policy Experiment ◽  
Public Signal ◽  
Voting Model

In a symmetric information voting model, an individual (politician) can influence voters' choices by strategically designing a policy experiment (public signal). We characterize the politician's optimal experiment. With a nonunanimous voting rule, she exploits voters' heterogeneity by designing an experiment with realizations targeting different winning coalitions. Consequently, under a simple-majority rule, a majority of voters might be strictly worse off due to the politician's influence. We characterize voters' preferences over electoral rules and provide conditions for a majority of voters to prefer a supermajority (or unanimity) voting rule, in order to induce the politician to supply a more informative experiment. (JEL D72, D83)

scholarly journals Special Majorities Rationalized

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT E. GOODIN ◽  
CHRISTIAN LIST
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Federal System ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Majority Rules ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Conservative Bias

Complaints are common about the arbitrary and conservative bias of special-majority rules. Such complaints, however, apply to asymmetrical versions of those rules alone. Symmetrical special-majority rules remedy that defect, albeit at the cost of often rendering no determinate verdict. Here what is formally at stake, both procedurally and epistemically, is explored in the choice between those two forms of special-majority rule and simple-majority rule; and practical ways are suggested of resolving matters left open by symmetrical special-majority rules – such as ‘judicial extrapolation’ or ‘subsidiarity’ in a federal system.

Reweighting the votes in the council of ministers (double simple majority voting rule and the nice compromise)

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
František Turnovec
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Member States ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Council Of Ministers ◽  
The Eu

In this paper we provide an analysis of the Commission's proposal of so called double simple majority rule (when to pass a decision simple majority of Member States and at the same time simple majority of total population has to be reached) for the voting in the Council of Ministers of the EU. In our evaluation we are using an a priori voting power methodology to measure an influence of the Member States before and after extension of the EU. In the closing part of the paper we shortly compare the double simple majority rule to the compromise approved by the 2000 Nice Summit of the EU.

Institution-Induced Stability

2019 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Shepsle
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Technical Literature ◽  
Marquis De Condorcet ◽  
Charles Dodgson

Simple majority rule is badly behaved. This is one of the earliest lessons learned by political scientists in the positive political theory tradition. Discovered and rediscovered by theorists over the centuries (including, famously, the Majorcan Franciscan monk Raymon Llull in the thirteenth century, the Marquis de Condorcet in the eighteenth, the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in the eighteenth, and Duncan Black in the twentieth), the method of majority rule cannot be counted on to produce a rational collective choice. In many circumstances (made precise in the technical literature), it is very likely (a claim also made precise) that whatever choice is produced will suffer the property of not being “best” in the preferences of all majorities: for any candidate alternative, there will always exist another alternative that some majority prefers to it. This chapter suggests that while a collection of preferences often cannot provide a collectively “best” choice, institutional arrangements, which restrict comparisons of alternatives, may allow majority rule to function more smoothly. That is, where equilibrium induced by preferences alone may fail to exist, institutional structure may induce stability.

Democratic Federalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-138
Author(s):  
Robert P. Inman ◽  
Daniel L. Rubinfeld
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
National Government ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
National Legislature

This chapter details the likely economic, democratic, and rights performance of a decentralized national legislature with representatives elected from geographically specified local districts. The national legislature is assigned responsibility for national public goods and services and national regulations. Decisions in the legislature are made by simple majority rule. Independent local governments continue to be responsible for important local services, perhaps provided concurrently with the national government. On the dimensions of democratic participation and the protection of rights and liberties, Democratic Federalism is likely to do well, provided all citizens are represented in the legislature. It is on the dimension of economic efficiency that legislature-only Democratic Federalism is most likely to fall short.

Convergence and Restricted Preference Maximizing under Simple Majority Rule: Results from a Computer Simulation of Committee Choice in Two-Dimensional Space

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Koehler
Keyword(s):  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Collective Choice ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Central Tendency ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Formal Procedures

Recent analyses of collective choice predict convergence among the outcomes of simple-majority decisions. I estimate the extent of convergence under restricted preference maximizing through a computer simulation of majority choice by committees in which individual decisions on proposal location and voting are constrained. The simulation generates distributions of majority-adopted proposals in two-dimensional space: nondeterministic outcomes of simple-majority choice. The proposal distributions provide data for a quantitative evaluation of the effects on convergence of relaxing conventional preference-maximizing assumptions. I find convergence of majority-adopted proposals in all cases, and that convergence increases under restricted proposal location. Moreover, under some voting restrictions, experiments yield stable outcomes that demonstrate remarkable convergence. I conclude that restricted preference maximizing generally increases the probability that simple-majority outcomes reflect the central tendency of member preference distributions. Since committees and legislatures are important formal procedures for democratic collective choice, this conclusion applies to a large class of political decisions.

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