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Protecting Minorities through the Average Voting Rule
Author(s) -
RENAULT RÉGIS,
TRANNOY ALAIN
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of public economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.809
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-9779
pISSN - 1097-3923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2005.00200.x
Subject(s) - voting , outcome (game theory) , majority rule , bliss , composition (language) , economics , public good , point (geometry) , microeconomics , political science , mathematics , computer science , law , programming language , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , politics
In the average voting rule, the outcome is some weighted average of votes. The unique average voting outcome is characterized by a median formula, which depends on voters' preferred allocations and some parameters constructed from voters' weights. A minority is said to be protected by a switch in voting rule if the outcome becomes closer to the median bliss point of the minority. Sufficient conditions for minority protection are that, either the minority's weight is sufficiently large or the majority outcome is too unfavorable to the minority. Applications to the composition of public goods and to public expenditures level are considered. We explore the combined use of average and majority voting in a two‐stage procedure for determining the level and the composition of public expenditures.