[en] We study the impact of deliberation rules on collective learning and decision making in committees. In contrast to much of the existing literature, this paper makes a distinction between the final votes over policy proposals and the cloture votes that bring them about. We show how deliberation rules can cause Pareto inefficient outcomes and failures to bring good proposals to a final vote, and how they affect the distribution of power among committee members in the deliberative process. We further show that deliberation rules are dynamically stable, even when they generate Pareto ineffcient outcomes.
Disciplines :
Economic systems & public economics
Author, co-author :
Anesi, Vincent ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance (FDEF) > Department of Economics and Management (DEM)
Safronov, Mikhail
External co-authors :
yes
Language :
English
Title :
Deciding When To Decide: Collective Deliberation and Obstruction
Acemoglu, D., G. Egorov, and K. Sonin, “Dynamics and Stability of Constitutions, Coalitions, and Clubs,” American Economic Review 102 (2012), 1446–76.
Anesi, V., and T. R. Bowen, “Policy Experimentation in Committees: A Case against Veto Rights under Redistributive Constraints, ” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 13 (2021), 124–62.
Anesi, V., and D. J. Seidmann, “Bargaining over an Endogenous Agenda, ” Theoretical Economics 9 (2014), 445–82.
Austen-Smith, D., and J. S. Banks, Positive Political Theory I: Collective Preference (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
Barberà, S., and M. O. Jackson, “Choosing How to Choose: Self-Stable Majority Rules and Constitutions, ” Quarterly Journal of Economics 119 (2004), 1011–48.
Baron, D. P., T. R. Bowen and S. Nunnari, “Durable Coalitions and Communication: Public versus Private Negotiations, ” Journal of Public Economics 156 (2017), 1–13.
Baron, D., and H. Kalai, “The Simplest Equilibrium of a Majority Rule Division Game, ” Journal of Economic Theory 61 (1993), 290–301.
Bolton, P., and A. Faure-Grimaud, “Thinking Ahead: The Decision Problem, ” Review of Economic Studies 76 (2009), 1205–38.
Bond, P., and H. Eraslan, “Strategic Voting over Strategic Proposals, ” Review of Economic Studies 77 (2010), 459–90.
Canen, N., “Information Accumulation and the Timing of Voting Decisions.” Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3514328, 2018.
Chan, J., A. Lizzeri, W. Suen, and L. Yariv, “Deliberating Collective Decisions, ” Review of Economic Studies 85 (2018), 929–63.
Chen, Y., and H. Eraslan, “Informational Loss in Bundled Bargaining, ” Journal of Theoretical Politics 25 (2013), 338–62.
Chen, Y., and H. Eraslan, “Rhetoric in Legislative Bargaining with Asymmetric Information, ” Theoretical Economics 9 (2014), 483–513.
Chung, H., and J. Duggan, “A Formal Theory of Democratic Deliberation, ” American Political Science Review 114 (2020), 14–35.
Dewatripont, M., and J. Tirole, “Modes of Communication, ” Journal of Political Economy 133 (2005), 217–1238.
Diermeier, D., C. Prato, and R. Vlaicu, “Procedural Choice in Majoritarian Organizations, ” American Journal of Political Science 59 (2015), 866–79.
Duggan, J., “Endogenous Voting Agendas, ” Social Choice and Welfare 27 (2006), 495–530.
Dziuda, W., and A. Loeper, “Dynamic Pivotal Politics, ” American Political Science Review 112 (2017), 580–601.
Freer, M., C. Martinelli, and S. Wang, “Collective Experimentation: A Laboratory Study, ” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 175 (2020), 365–79.
Ginzburg, B., and J. S. Guerra, “When Collective Ignorance Is Bliss: Theory and Experiment on Voting for Learning, ” Journal of Public Economics 169 (2019), 52–64.
Hafer, C., and D. Landa, “Deliberation as Self-Discovery and Institutions for Political Speech, ” Journal of Theoretical Politics 19 (2007), 329–60.
Krehbiel, K., “Pivots,” in B. Weingast and D. Wittman, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 223–41.
Kwiek, M., H. Marreiros, and M. Vlassopoulos, “Voting as a War of Attrition, ” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 167 (2019), 104–21.
Landa, D., and A. Meirowitz, “Game Theory, Information, and Deliberative Democracy, ” American Journal of Political Science 53 (2009), 427–44.
