Demokratiets vilkårlighed

Jeg har en ny artikel, men om et "gammelt" emne: Den empiriske forekomst af social choice-teoris "valgparadokser".  Denne gang med to tidligere studerende, Emily Duminski og Søren Nikolai Horndrup, og i Økonomi & Politik.  Her er sammendraget:

"I et demokratisk system kan vælgerpræferencer aggregeres til en samlet kollektiv præference på et utal af forskellige måder, hvorefter en specifik aggregeringsmetode fordeler det samlede antal mandater mellem partierne. Hvis metoden producerer resultater, som divergerer fra vælgernes underliggende præferencer, opstår der såkaldte valgparadokser. De kendes fra flertalsvalgsystemer (f.eks.  amerikanske og britiske valg), men det er generelt overset, at de også kan forekomme under forholdstalsvalg. Ved brug af data fra valgundersøgelserne i.f.m. folketingsvalgene 2007, 2011 og 2015 analyseres den mulige empiriske forekomst af fire teoretisk udledte valgparadokser fra social choice teori. Vi viser, at alle fire valgparadokser forekommer empirisk. Dermed sættes der spørgsmålstegn ved, i hvilket omfang folketingsvalgs udfald kan udlægges som en afspejling af folkets vilje."

The costs and benefits of democratic deliberation

Do you know the old fable of Buridan's Ass? Where a donkey dies because it cannot decide whether to drink first or eat first.

On that note: I have a new research article out in Constitutional Political Economy, co-authored with economist Urs Steiner Brandt. We take on the issue of "democratic deliberation" and ask: When is too much of a good thing too much? Through a mathematical model and some simulations, we demonstrate that even in relatively small groups the costs of spending more time deliberating / getting more people on board may actually exceed the benefits of doing so.  At some point it is better to stop deliberating and making a decision.

 

Here is the abstract:

"Deliberation may increase the quality of decisions but also necessarily takes time and effort and hence will have costs. But proponents of deliberative democracy as an attractive or superior method for making decisions almost all focus on presumed benefits while in practice ignoring the costs associated with investing time and resources in the process of deliberation. We show that the cost side significantly influences the performance of the deliberative process. Through a number of simulations, we demonstrate that there must be a certain point beyond which the costs of deliberating will outweigh the potential benefits. Since this type of processes invariably will be time consuming, especially when the convergence of the participants towards a common goal is slow, conditions are derived where the deliberative process performs relatively well or relatively poorly, both as concerns the probability of reaching an agreement and in the net benefits to the participants. This is especially the case when the number of participants increase."

 

A couple of new papers out: Danish political system + social democracy/public choice

I have a couple of new papers coming out in anthologies.  One is with my good colleague, Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, "Change and stability in the Danish party system", in M. Lisi (ed.): Party system change, the European crisis and the state of democracy. London; N.Y.: Routledge, 2018, pp. 63-79 (Routledge Studies on Political Parties and Party Systems).


Here is from the introduction:

"When looking at the Danish political system in the first decade and a half of the new millennium, it is tempting to quote Lampedusa’s words from  Il Gattopardo: That everything must change so that everything can remain the same. New parties emerged, semi-old parties disappeared but, on the surface, most things seem largely the same. Yet that would to a large extent be to ignore some quite subtle but important changes, fi rst and foremost that the “quadropoly” of the “four old parties”, which has dominated Danish politics for a century, have declined in strength and given way to a much more fragmented and multipolar party system. This change has come about gradually. There is no particular revival after the economic or immigration crises and neither does the framing of new parties indicate a link. While these crises have had an impact on the political agenda and policies, they do not seem to have had an impact on the confi guration of the Danish party system.  The historic core of the Danish party system has declined. The four old parties won nine out of ten votes prior to the earthquake election of 1973 at which they gained only 58 percent. In the period under scrutiny here, the combined electoral base of these four parties has shrunk from three out of four in 2001 and 2005 to two-thirds in 2007 and 2011 and only just over half in 2015. While they still provide a core, they simply do not dominate the party system to the same extent as they used to. This decline in the support for the oldest parties is similar across the Scandinavian countries but more marked in Denmark."

The other is my "Public choice and social democracy" in R. Congleton, B. Grofman & S. Voigt (eds.) Oxford handbook of public choice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, Vol. 1. (Oxford Handbooks). Here is the abstract:

"Since World War I, “social democracy” has been one of the most influential political ideas. It refers to a partisan political movement, an ideological orientation, and a set of political institutions. Common denominators are the extension of democracy to socioeconomic spheres and an expansion of government activities beyond those of merely providing national security, law and order, and a narrow set of public goods. However, such a program would seem problematic given a number of insights offered by public choice theory: All forms of majority decisions are sensitive to even small changes in the procedures and are likely to produce outcomes not preferred by a majority. Majority decisions also risk producing Pareto-inferior outcomes, especially when costs can be imposed on others. And the fewer constitutional limits on government activities there are, the larger the extent of rent seeking with associated welfare losses is likely to be. Together these points are significant challenges to a program that wants to extend majority decision to new spheres while simultaneously promising prosperity for all."