Rational Turnout: The Neglected Role of Groups

Social Capital and Debt Contracting: Evidence from Bank Loans and Public Bonds

“…There is considerable evidence that individuals in communities with higher levels of social capital (i.e., strong cooperative norms and dense social networks) are less likely to engage in opportunistic, self-serving behaviors. 3 This is because opportunistic behaviors are contradictory to the prescribed values associated with cooperative norms, while dense social networks intensify the external social sanctions (Coleman (1988)) such as social ostracism (Uhlaner (1989)) and stigmatization (Posner (2000)), and heighten negative moral sentiments such as guilt and shame associated with perpetrating opportunistic behaviors. Further, in communities with higher levels of social capital, perpetrators of opportunistic behaviors could suffer significant innate discomfort even if the actual behaviors are unobserved (Elster (1989)).…”

The Contraction Effect: How Proportional Representation Affects Mobilization and Turnout

“…Early rational choice work argued that close elections increase the chance that a single voter might become "pivotal" in determining the outcome, and thus increase voter turnout (Downs, 1957;Tullock, 1968;Riker and Ordeshook, 1968). However, after the realization that these pivotal voter theories predict vanishingly small turnout rates in large electorates (Palfrey and Rosenthal, 1985), several scholars-beginning with Morton (1987Morton ( , 1991 and Uhlaner (1989)-attempted to resolve the "paradox of voting" by focusing instead on the mobilizational efforts of politicians and interest groups (e.g., Cox and Munger, 1989;Aldrich, 1993;Shachar and Nalebuff, 1999). The basic argument is that elite actors in close races might rationally invest in mobilizing voters, while those voters might rationally respond to such mobilization by turning out to vote.…”

Voting as a signaling device

“…According to the ethical voting literature (Harsanyi 1980, Coate and Conlin 2004, Feddersen and Sandroni 2006 voters decide on the ground of moral principles and they derive utility from adhering to them. The leader-follower theories (Uhlaner 1989, Morton 1991, Shachar and Nalebuff 1999, Herrera and Martinelli 2006 emphasize the role of leaders and their ability to impose sanctions or to provide rewards in motivating social groups to participate in elections. Fowler (2005) argues that individuals imitate the voting behavior of their social circle, which can lead to turnout cascades.…”