Sequential vote buying

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chen, Ying; Zapal, Jan
• 署名单位: Johns Hopkins University; Charles University Prague; Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2022.105529
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Vote buying; Endogenous sequencing; preference heterogeneity; Transfer promise; Up -front payment

摘要

To enact a policy, a leader needs votes from q committee members with heterogeneous opposition intensities. She sequentially offers transfers in exchange for votes. The transfers are either promises paid only if the policy passes or paid up front. With transfer promises, the policy passes in equilibrium when the leader's gain from the policy is larger than the sum of the losses of the q members least opposed to the policy. Under non-unanimity rule, if the members are patient enough, the payments are close to zero when the policy passes. Whenever the policy passes in equilibrium with transfer promises, it also passes with upfront payments, at a cost close to zero. Moreover, there are scenarios when the policy passes with up-front payments, but not with transfer promises. Hence the leader is better off and the members are worse off with up-front payments than with transfer promises. The leader does not necessarily buy the votes of those least opposed. The opposition structure most challenging to the leader involves homogeneous committees. Our results provide an explanation for several empirical regularities.