Stability and Manipulation in Representative Democracies

31 Pages Posted: 6 Sep 2007

See all articles by Sebastian Bervoets

Sebastian Bervoets

Universite de la Mediterranee - Centre de la Vieille Charite; UAB - CODE

Vincent R. Merlin

Centre de Recherche en Économie et Management (CREM)

Date Written: September 2006

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the analysis of all constitutions equipped with electoral systems involving two step procedures. First, one candidate is elected in every jurisdiction by the electors in that jurisdiction, according to some aggregation procedure. Second, another aggregation procedure collects the names of the jurisdictional winners in order to designate the final winner. It appears that whenever individuals are allowed to change jurisdiction when casting their ballot, they are able to manipulate the result of the election except in very few cases. When imposing a paretian condition on every jurisdiction's voting rule, it is shown that, in the case of any finite number of candidates, any two steps voting rule that is not manipulable by movement of the electors necessarily gives to every voter the power of overruling the unanimity on its own. A characterization of the set of these rules is next provided in the case of two candidates.

Keywords: Gerrymandering, manipulation, two-tiers voting systems

JEL Classification: D71, D72

Suggested Citation

Bervoets, Sebastian and Bervoets, Sebastian and Merlin, Vincent R., Stability and Manipulation in Representative Democracies (September 2006). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1012290 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1012290

Sebastian Bervoets (Contact Author)

Universite de la Mediterranee - Centre de la Vieille Charite ( email )

2, rue de la Charité
Marseille, 13 002
France

UAB - CODE ( email )

Edifici B
Bellaterra, 08193
Spain

Vincent R. Merlin

Centre de Recherche en Économie et Management (CREM) ( email )

7, place Hoche
Rennes, Bretagne 35065
France

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