Pivotality and responsibility attribution in sequential voting

Abstract

This paper analyzes responsibility attributions for outcomes of collective decision making processes. In particular, we ask if decision makers are blamed for being pivotal if they implement an unpopular outcome in a sequential voting process. We conduct an experimental voting game in which decision makers vote about the allocation of money between themselves and recipients without voting rights. We measure responsibility attributions for voting decisions by eliciting the monetary punishment that recipients assign to individual decision makers. We find that pivotal decision makers are punished significantly more for an unpopular voting outcome than non-pivotal decision makers. Our data also suggest that some voters avoid being pivotal by voting strategically in order to delegate the pivotal vote to subsequent decision makers.

Voters, Responsibility Attribution and Support Parties in Parliamentary Democracies

“… 6 Bartling, Fiscbacher, and Schudy, 2015; Shapley and Shubik 1954. As with the main results in Duch, Przepiorka, and Stevenson (2015), the empirical work supporting this later conclusion comes from laboratory experiments.…”

Cooperation against all predictions

“…They and McEvoy (2010) find that, in sequential decisions, the pivotality (criticality) of players increases the contribution frequency. Bartling et al (2015) find that pivotality increases responsibility attribution.…”

Economic polarization and antisocial behavior: An experiment

“…In this respect, the situation we analyze is also different from the one modeled by Bartling and Fischbacher (2012) and Bartling et al (2015), where the direct attribution of responsibility is the main driver of punishment. Similarly, expectation-based models such as the one proposed by Rabin (1993) do not predict any exit.…”