On the Buyability of Voting Bodies, Temas2007-2165International Monetary Fund, 2007 - 32 páginas We study vote buying by competing interest groups in a variety of electoral and contractual settings. While increasing the size of a voting body reduces its buyability in the absence of competition, we show that larger voting bodies may be more buyable than smaller voting bodies when interest groups compete. In contrast, imposing the secret ballot---which we model as forcing interest groups to contract on outcomes rather than votes---is an effective way to fight vote buying in the presence of competition, but much less so in its absence. We also study more sophisticated vote buying contracts. We show that, regardless of competition, the option to contract on both votes and outcomes is worthless, as it does not affect buyability as compared to contracting only on votes. In contrast, when interest groups can contract on votes and vote shares, we show that voting bodies are uniquely at risk of being bought. |
Términos y frases comunes
A's coalition absence of competition Assumption buy a supermajority buyability of voting c₁ Chartist circumvent the secret contingent on votes contract offered contract on votes contracts contingent direct effect discriminatory contracts discriminatory vote buying election enjoy a payoff exists an equilibrium Groseclose and Snyder Hence individual votes intrinsic preferences favoring intrinsic support larger voting bodies least WB least-cost contract least-cost successful contract Lien Chan lobbying groups median voter non-discriminatory contracts non-discriminatory vote buying null contract number of voters option outcome-contingent pivotal policy outcome preference function preferences of voters preferred policy presence of competition Proof of Proposition Province of China re-bribing recruiting a supermajority relative preference rent-seeking result secret ballot simple majority smaller voting bodies strategic effect successful vote buying supermajority of voters supporters of policy surplus payment Taiwan Province vote according vote buying contracts vote buying scheme vote shares voters with indices votes and outcomes votes and vote zero