IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dpr/wpaper/1059.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Winner-Take-All Dilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Kazuya Kikuchi
  • Yukio Koriyama

Abstract

This paper considers collective decision-making when individuals are partitioned into groups (e.g., states or parties) endowed with voting weights. We study a game in which each group chooses an internal rule that specifies the allocation of its weight to the alternatives as a function of its members’ preferences. We show that under quite general conditions, the game is a Prisoner’s Dilemma: while the winner-take-all rule is a dominant strategy, the equilibrium is Pareto dominated. We also show asymptotic Pareto dominance of the proportional rule. Our numerical computation for the US Electoral College verifies the sensibility of the asymptotic results.

Suggested Citation

  • Kazuya Kikuchi & Yukio Koriyama, 2019. "The Winner-Take-All Dilemma," ISER Discussion Paper 1059, Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka.
    • Handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.osaka-u.ac.jp/static/resources/docs/dp/2019/DP1059.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    2. Fields, Gary S & Fei, John C H, 1978. "On Inequality Comparisons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(2), pages 303-316, March.
    3. Sascha Kurz & Nicola Maaser & Stefan Napel, 2017. "On the Democratic Weights of Nations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(5), pages 1599-1634.
    4. Melis Kartal, 2015. "A Comparative Welfare Analysis of Electoral Systems with Endogenous Turnout," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(587), pages 1369-1392, September.
    5. Brams, Steven J. & Davis, Morton D., 1974. "The 3/2's Rule in Presidential Campaigning," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(1), pages 113-134, March.
    6. Salvador Barbera & Matthew O. Jackson, 2006. "On the Weights of Nations: Assigning Voting Weights in a Heterogeneous Union," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 317-339, April.
    7. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    8. Olivier Mouzon & Thibault Laurent & Michel Breton & Dominique Lepelley, 2019. "Exploring the effects of national and regional popular vote Interstate compact on a toy symmetric version of the Electoral College: an electoral engineering perspective," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 51-95, April.
    9. David Stromberg, 2008. "How the Electoral College Influences Campaigns and Policy: The Probability of Being Florida," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 769-807, June.
    10. Laruelle,Annick & Valenciano,Federico, 2011. "Voting and Collective Decision-Making," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521182638, January.
    11. Moyes, Patrick, 1989. "Some classes of functions that preserve the inequality and welfare orderings of income distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 347-359, December.
    12. Dan S. Felsenthal & Moshé Machover, 1998. "The Measurement of Voting Power," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1489.
    13. Shapley, L. S. & Shubik, Martin, 1954. "A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(3), pages 787-792, September.
    14. Gelman Andrew, 2003. "Forming Voting Blocs and Coalitions as a Prisoner's Dilemma: A Possible Theoretical Explanation for Political Instability," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-14, October.
    15. Patrick Hummel, 2011. "Proportional versus winner-take-all electoral vote allocations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 381-393, September.
    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. Héloïse Cloléry & Yukio Koriyama, 2020. "Elections présidentielles américaines : comment sortir du dilemme du prisonnier ?," Post-Print halshs-03019443, HAL.

    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. Kikuchi, Kazuya & Koriyama, Yukio, 2023. "The winner-take-all dilemma," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 18(3), July.
    2. Kurz, Sascha & Maaser, Nicola & Napel, Stefan, 2018. "Fair representation and a linear Shapley rule," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 152-161.
    3. Olivier Mouzon & Thibault Laurent & Michel Breton & Dominique Lepelley, 2019. "Exploring the effects of national and regional popular vote Interstate compact on a toy symmetric version of the Electoral College: an electoral engineering perspective," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 51-95, April.
    4. Le Breton, Michel & Montero, Maria & Zaporozhets, Vera, 2012. "Voting power in the EU council of ministers and fair decision making in distributive politics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 159-173.
    5. Matthias Weber, 2014. "Choosing Voting Systems behind the Veil of Ignorance: A Two-Tier Voting Experiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-042/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Di Giannatale, Paolo & Passarelli, Francesco, 2013. "Voting chances instead of voting weights," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 164-173.
    7. Michel Breton & Karine Straeten, 2015. "Influence versus utility in the evaluation of voting rules: a new look at the Penrose formula," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 103-122, October.
    8. Le Breton, Michel & Montero, Maria & Zaporozhets, Vera, 2012. "Voting power in the EU council of ministers and fair decision making in distributive politics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 159-173.
    9. Fabrice Barthelemy & Mathieu Martin, 2011. "A Comparison Between the Methods of Apportionment Using Power Indices: the Case of the US Presidential Elections," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 101-102, pages 87-106.
    10. Serguei Kaniovski, 2008. "The exact bias of the Banzhaf measure of power when votes are neither equiprobable nor independent," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 281-300, August.
    11. René Brink & Frank Steffen, 2012. "Axiomatizations of a positional power score and measure for hierarchies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 757-787, June.
    12. Fabrice Barthelemy & Mathieu Martin & Bertrand Tchantcho, 2011. "Some conjectures on the two main power indices," THEMA Working Papers 2011-14, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    13. Le Breton, Michel & Lepelley, Dominique & Macé, Antonin & Merlin, Vincent, 2017. "Le mécanisme optimal de vote au sein du conseil des représentants d’un système fédéral," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 93(1-2), pages 203-248, Mars-Juin.
    14. Houy, Nicolas & Zwicker, William S., 2014. "The geometry of voting power: Weighted voting and hyper-ellipsoids," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 7-16.
    15. Nicola Maaser & Alexander Mayer, 2016. "Codecision in context: implications for the balance of power in the EU," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 213-237, January.
    16. Zaporozhets, Vera, 2015. "Power Distribution in French River Basin Committees," TSE Working Papers 15-558, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    17. N. Maaser, 2017. "Simple vs. Sophisticated Rules for the Allocation of Voting Weights," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 67-78, April.
    18. Kurz, Sascha & Mayer, Alexander & Napel, Stefan, 2021. "Influence in weighted committees," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    19. Matthias Weber, 2014. "Solving the Inverse Power Problem in Two-Tier Voting Settings," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-019/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    20. Kong, Qianqian & Peters, Hans, 2023. "Power indices for networks, with applications to matching markets," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(1), pages 448-456.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:dpr:wpaper:1059. 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: Librarian (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isosujp.html .

    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.