Anna Bassi

Voting systems and strategic manipulation: An experimental study

This article presents experiments that analyze the strategic behavior of voters under three voting systems: plurality rule, approval voting, and the Borda count. Applying a level-k reasoning model approach, strategic behavior is found to be significantly different under each treatment (voting system). Plurality rule leads voters to play in the most sophisticated (i.e. best response), but not necessarily insincere, manner. Thus, this voting system displays at the same time the highest incidence of best responses and of sincere votes. The opposite holds for the Borda count games, where voters depart from their sincere strategy the most, without playing the best response strategy. Approval voting shows intermediate levels of sophistication and sincere behavior.

The Effects of Identities, Incentives, and Information on Voting

We report on majority voting experiments where subjects are randomly assigned identities in common with a candidate. However, subjects sometimes receive a financial incentive from voting contrary to their identity. We vary the size of the incentive as well as information voters have about the advantage of the incentive. We find that subjects are influenced by their assigned identities, and the effect is stronger when voters have less information. Nevertheless, financial incentives reduce this influence when voters have full information. Our results suggest that identity may have an important affect on voter choices in elections where incentives or information are low.

Weather, Mood, and Voting: An Experimental Analysis of the Effect of Weather Beyond Turnout

Theoretical and empirical studies show that inclement weather on an election day reduces turnout, potentially swinging the results of the election. Psychology studies, however, show that weather affects individual mood, which -- in turn -- affects individual decision-making activity potentially beyond the simple decision to turn out. This paper evaluates the effect of weather, through its effect on mood, on the way in which voters who do turn out decide to cast their votes. The paper provides experimental evidence of the effect of weather on voting when candidates are perceived as being more or less risky. Findings show that, after controlling for policy preferences, partisanship, and other background variables, bad weather depresses individual mood and risk tolerance, i.e., voters are more likely to vote for the candidate who is perceived to be less risky. This effect is present whether meteorological conditions are measured with objective or subjective measures.

Policy Preferences in Coalition Formation and the Stability of Minority and Surplus Governments

In parliamentary democracies, political parties bargain over cabinet portfolios when forming coalition governments. While most of the theoretical literature predicts that only minimal winning coalitions form in equilibrium, the empirical evidence shows that minority and surplus coalitions are about as frequent. In this article, I bridge the gap between the theoretical predictions and the empirical evidence by developing a noncooperative bargaining model in which parties are both office seeking and policy pursuing. Parties bargain over cabinet portfolios, which in turn determines the government policy. Parties are farsighted, and when they coalesce with other parties, they take into account not only the expected cabinet portfolio allocation but also how this allocation would affect the government coalition policy. The model predicts in equilibrium the formation of minimal winning as well as minority and surplus coalitions as a function of a party’s size, ideal policies, and relative preference for policy versus office.

Examining Monotonicity and Saliency Using Level-k Reasoning in a Voting Game

This paper presents an experiment that evaluates the effect of financial incentives and complexity in political science voting experiments. To evaluate the effect of complexity we adopt a level- k reasoning model concept. This model by Nagel [1] postulates that players might be of different types, each corresponding to the level of reasoning in which they engage. Furthermore, to postulate the effect of financial incentives on subjects’ choice, we used the Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE) concept. In a QRE, players’ decisions are noisy, with the probability of playing a given strategy increasing in its expected payoff. Hence, the choice probability is a function of the magnitude of the financial incentives. Our results show that low complexity promotes the highest degree of level- k strategic reasoning in every payment treatment. Standard financial incentives are enough to induce equilibrium behavior, and the marginal effect of extra incentives on equilibrium behavior seems to be negligible. High complexity, instead, decreases the rate of convergence to equilibrium play. With a sufficiently high complexity, increasing payoff amounts does promote more strategic behavior in a significant manner. Our results show with complex voting games, higher financial incentives are required for the subjects to exert the effort needed to complete the task.