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Incomplete information, proportional representation and strategic voting

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>12/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Social Choice and Welfare
Issue number4
Volume47
Number of pages25
Pages (from-to)879-903
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date27/09/16
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We introduce incomplete information to a multiparty election under proportional representation: each voter knows her preferences and votes strategically to maximize her payoffs, but is uncertain about the number and the preferences of the other voters. Parties are assumed to be purely office motivated and, hence, the resulting governments are always minimum winning. In this framework we prove a) generic existence of equilibria where only two parties receive a positive fraction of the votes and therefore lead to single-party governments and b) generic inexistence of equilibria that lead to coalition governments. That is, contrary to common wisdom, a proportional rule is found not to promote sincere voting and to be favorable towards single-party governments. The existence of two-party equilibria that lead to single-party governments is robust to parties having ideological concerns.

Bibliographic note

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00355-016-0995-7