Private Benefits, Public Vices: Railways and Logrolling in the Nineteenth-Century British Parliament

Vote trading among lawmakers (logrolling) can enable political rent-seeking but is difficult to identify. To achieve identification, we explore the rules governing voting for railway projects in the U.K. Parliament during the Railway Mania of the 1840s. Parliamentary rules barred MPs from voting directly for their interests. Even so, they could trade votes to ensure their interests prevailed. We find that logrolling was significant, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the railway bills approved. We also quantify a negative externality to society from logrolling ranging from 1/3 to 1 percent of contemporary GDP.

Vote Trading and Electoral Success in Nigerian Democracy

Democracy is based on the principle of the majority able to choose who leads them in a free and fair context devoid of external interference and political influence. The right to elect a wrong candidate is even part of democracy. The law cannot regulate the legitimate choices that the democratic free will is entitled to make. It chooses what it will. It rejects what it will not choose, or else the democratic free will ceases to be what it fundamentally ought to be, namely “free”. Vote trading is a concept in the Nigerian democratic experience. The issue of vote-trading has been in Nigeria's democracy since its inception but became prominent during the present democratic dispensation. Vote buying has been serving as a clog in the wheel of free choice which is the hallmark of a democracy. Unfortunately, not all people that being influenced by vote-buying know what is going on. Some people indulge in the act of vote-trading unknowing. This study which is mainly based on literature and conceptually looked at the influence of vote trading on voter’s free choice, the factors that influenced both vote buying and selling, and how it can be curbed. Consequently, past literature, like journals, books, and other publications on vote-trading were considered in this study.

Geographically Targeted Spending in Mixed-Member Majoritarian Electoral Systems

ABSTRACT Can governments elected under mixed-member majoritarian (mmm) electoral systems use geographically targeted spending to increase their chances of staying in office, and if so, how? Although twenty-eight countries use mmm electoral systems, scant research has addressed this question. The authors explain how mmm’s combination of electoral systems in two unlinked tiers creates a distinct strategic environment in which a large party and a small party can trade votes in one tier for votes in the other tier in a way that increases the number of seats won by both. They then explain how governing parties dependent on vote trading can use geographically targeted spending to cement it. These propositions are tested using original data from Japan (2003–2013) and Mexico (2012–2016). In both cases, municipalities in which the supporters of governing parties split their ballots as instructed were found to have received more money after elections. The findings have broad implications for research on mmm electoral systems, distributive politics, and the politics of Japan and Mexico.

Does Vote Trading Improve Welfare?

Voters have strong incentives to increase their influence by trading votes, acquiring others’ votes when preferences are strong in exchange for giving votes away when preferences are weak. But is vote trading welfare improving or welfare decreasing? For a practice long believed to be central to collective decisions, the lack of a clear answer is surprising. We review the theoretical literature and, when available, its related experimental tests. We begin with the analysis of logrolling, the exchange of votes for votes. We then focus on vote markets, where votes can be traded against a numeraire. We conclude with procedures allowing voters to shift votes across decisions—that is, allowing one to trade votes with oneself only. We find that vote trading and vote markets are typically inefficient; more encouraging results are obtained by allowing voters to allocate votes across decisions. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 13 is August 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Vote trading in power-sharing systems: A laboratory investigation*

Vote trading in power-sharing systems—i.e., systems in which a voter’s utility with respect to the election’s outcome is proportional to the vote share of her favourite party—is, in theory, welfare improving. However, trading votes for money in majoritarian systems may have detrimental welfare effects, especially when voters’ preference intensities are similar (Casella et al., 2012). We use a laboratory experiment to test the effect of vote trading in each of these popular electoral systems on voter welfare and find strong evidence in support of the above intuitions: vote trading in power-sharing systems boosts aggregate welfare across all considered specifications, but it is not welfare improving in majoritarian systems. Importantly, and contrary to theoretical predictions, a substantial share of subjects consistently lose from vote trading even in power-sharing systems, indicating that its welfare effects are not unambiguous.

BENTUK POLITIK UANG PADA PILKADA PROVINSI BENGKULU TAHUN 2015

Artikel ini menjelaskan tentang politik uang yang terjadi pada Pilkada di Provinsi Bengkulu tahun 2015. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kualitatif, dengan menggunakan teknik pengumpulan data yaitu wawancara dan dokumentasi. Sedangkan yang menjadi sasaran penelitian ini adalah Bawaslu, KPUD dan Tim Sukses. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa bentuk politik uang terdiri dari vote buying sebanyak 33 kasus, vote trading sebanyak 2 kasus dan club goods sebanyak 1 kasus. Semua laporan tersebut tidak ditindaklanjuti karena tidak memenuhi syarat formal dan materil serta kedaluwarsa, kecuai kasus PPK Singaran Pati yang digugat pasangan Sultan-Mujiono ke Mahkamah Konstitsi. Meskipun MK akhirnya menolak gugatan tersebut berdasarkan pertimbangan ambang batas suara antara pemohon dan peraih suara terbanyak dengan selisih diantara keduanya sebesar 14%.