IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v19y2007i3p301-327.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

In Defense of Exclusionary Deliberation: Communication and Voting with Private Beliefs and Values

Author

Listed:
  • Adam Meirowitz

    (Department of Politics, Corwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA, ameirowi@princeton.edu)

Abstract

We analyze strategic communication and voting when agents do not necessarily have common beliefs and values. The potential for some pairs of participants to have opposed preferences makes truthful revelation difficult to support. Nonetheless, truthful equilibria are shown to exist for some parameterizations in which non-common values are likely. Truthful equilibria exist if and only if participants of all possible preference types are optimistic that a majority of the group has their preference type. In settings in which truthful equilibria exist for all population sizes, asymptotic efficiency attains. The probability that the collective choice corresponds to that which a majority would choose with full-information approaches one as population size tends to infinity. In many settings, however, truthful equilibria exist only for small groups. In these cases, we characterize a natural partially revealing equilibrium; asymptotic efficiency fails in these equilibria. Interestingly, we find that larger groups need not outperform smaller groups as truthful equilibria are easier to support with small deliberative bodies. Thus, the design of deliberative institutions involves a trade-off between the statistical benefit of more participants and the difficulty in supporting information transmission in larger settings. For many reasonable cases, the latter effect is dominant and excluding randomly chosen participants is desirable.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Meirowitz, 2007. "In Defense of Exclusionary Deliberation: Communication and Voting with Private Beliefs and Values," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(3), pages 301-327, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:19:y:2007:i:3:p:301-327
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629807077572
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629807077572
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629807077572?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glazer, Jacob & Rubinstein, Ariel, 2001. "Debates and Decisions: On a Rationale of Argumentation Rules," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 158-173, August.
    2. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    3. Lipman Barton L. & Seppi Duane J., 1995. "Robust Inference in Communication Games with Partial Provability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 370-405, August.
    4. Meirowitz, Adam, 2006. "Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 1(4), pages 373-392, October.
    5. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    6. Dino Gerardi & Leeat Yariv, 2003. "Putting Your Ballot Where you Mouth Is: An Analysis of Collective Choice," Levine's Working Paper Archive 506439000000000280, David K. Levine.
    7. Feddersen, Timothy J & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1996. "The Swing Voter's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 408-424, June.
    8. Myerson, Roger B., 1998. "Extended Poisson Games and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 111-131, October.
    9. Daniel Berend & Jacob Paroush, 1998. "When is Condorcet's Jury Theorem valid?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 15(4), pages 481-488.
    10. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    11. Duggan, John & Martinelli, Cesar, 2001. "A Bayesian Model of Voting in Juries," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 259-294, November.
    12. Adam Meirowitz, 2002. "Informative voting and condorcet jury theorems with a continuum of types," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 19(1), pages 219-236.
    13. McLennan, Andrew, 1998. "Consequences of the Condorcet Jury Theorem for Beneficial Information Aggregation by Rational Agents," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 413-418, June.
    14. Wit, Jorgen, 1998. "Rational Choice and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 364-376, February.
    15. Dino Gerardi & Leeat Yariv, 2003. "Putting Your Ballot Where Your Mouth Is: An Analysis of Collective Choice with Communication," UCLA Economics Working Papers 827, UCLA Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Javier Rivas & Carmelo Rodríguez-Álvarez, 2017. "Deliberation, Leadership and Information Aggregation," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(4), pages 395-429, July.
    2. Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2009. "Decision Making and Learning in a Globalizing World," Economics Working Papers ECO2009/20, European University Institute.
    3. Ban, Radu & Jha, Saumitra & Rao, Vijayendra, 2012. "Who has voice in a deliberative democracy? Evidence from transcripts of village parliaments in south India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 428-438.
    4. Xin Zhao, 2018. "Heterogeneity and Unanimity: Optimal Committees with Information Acquisition," Working Paper Series 52, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    5. Pogorelskiy. Kirill & Shum, Matthew, 2019. "News We Like to Share : How News Sharing on Social Networks Influences Voting Outcomes," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1199, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    6. Yun Wang, 2015. "Bayesian Persuasion with Multiple Receivers," Working Papers 2015-03-24, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    7. Mark T. Le Quement & Isabel Marcin, 2016. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2016_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Oct 2016.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meirowitz, Adam, 2004. "In Defense of Exclusionary Deliberation: Communication and Voting with Private Beliefs and Values," Papers 04-06-2004, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    2. Sourav Bhattacharya, 2006. "Preference Monotonicity and Information Aggregation in Elections," Working Paper 325, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Dec 2008.
    3. Meirowitz, Adam, 2005. "Deliberative Democracy or Market Democracy: Designing Institutions to Aggregate Preferences and Information," Papers 03-28-2005, Princeton University, Research Program in Political Economy.
    4. Patrick Hummel, 2012. "Deliberation in large juries with diverse preferences," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 595-608, March.
    5. J. Goertz, 2014. "Inefficient committees: small elections with three alternatives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(2), pages 357-375, August.
    6. Hummel, Patrick, 2011. "Information aggregation in multicandidate elections under plurality rule and runoff voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-6, July.
    7. Gerardi, Dino & Yariv, Leeat, 2007. "Deliberative voting," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 317-338, May.
    8. Henry, Emeric, 2008. "The informational role of supermajorities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2225-2239, October.
    9. Jianan Wang, 2021. "Evidence and fully revealing deliberation with non-consequentialist jurors," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 515-531, December.
    10. Martinelli, Cesar, 2006. "Would rational voters acquire costly information?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 225-251, July.
    11. Ruth Ben-Yashar, 2006. "Information is important to Condorcet jurors," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 305-319, June.
    12. Jerome Mathis, 2006. "Deliberation with Partially Verifiable Information," THEMA Working Papers 2006-03, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    13. Mengel, Friederike & Rivas, Javier, 2017. "Common value elections with private information and informative priors: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 190-221.
    14. Ruth Ben-Yashar & Igal Milchtaich, 2003. "First and Second Best Voting Rules in Committees," Working Papers 2003-08, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    15. GOERTZ, Johanna & MANIQUET, François, 2013. "Large elections with multiple alternatives: a Condorcet Jury Theorem and inefficient equilibria," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2013023, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    16. Tajika, Tomoya, 2022. "Voting on tricky questions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 380-389.
    17. Paolo Balduzzi & Clara Graziano & Annalisa Luporini, 2014. "Voting in small committees," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 69-95, February.
    18. Kim, Jaehoon & Fey, Mark, 2007. "The swing voter's curse with adversarial preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 236-252, July.
    19. Gratton, Gabriele, 2014. "Pandering and electoral competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 163-179.
    20. Dino Gerardi & Leeat Yariv, 2003. "Committee Design in the Presence of Communication," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1411, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:19:y:2007:i:3:p:301-327. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.