Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T17:47:14.442Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Problem of Strategic Behavior under Approval Voting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Richard G. Niemi
Richard G. Niemi*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Approval voting is being promoted as “the election reform of the 20th century” (Brams, 1980, p. 105), and indeed if voters' preferences are dichotomous, approval voting has some remarkable qualities: it is uniquely strategy-proof, a candidate wins if and only if he is a Condorcet winner, and voters have simple strategies that are at once sincere and sophisticated. However, all of these results depend on the existence of dichotomous preferences, a contrived and empirically unlikely assumption. Here I show that these virtues of approval voting are replaced by some rather undesirable features under more plausible assumptions. More fundamentally, rather than promoting “honest” behavior, as is sometimes implied, the existence of multiple sincere strategies almost begs voters to behave strategically. I also examine sophisticated approval voting and show that in the general case it need not pick a Condorcet alternative. Ironically, there is a condition under which Condorcet winners may always be picked, but for this to occur, voters sometimes have to vote for candidates of whom they disapprove.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 952 - 958
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brams, S. J.Approval voting in multicandidate elections. Policy Studies Journal, 1980, 9, 102–108.Google Scholar
Brams, S. J.Comparison voting. Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1978.Google Scholar
Brams, S. J.Game theory and politics. New York: Free Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Brams, S. J.Strategic information and voting behavior. Society, 1982, 19, 4–11.Google Scholar
Brams, S. J., & Fishburn, P. C.Approval voting. American Political Science Review, 1978, 72, 831–847.Google Scholar
Farquharson, R.Theory of voting. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Fishburn, P. C., & Brams, S. J.Approval voting, Condorcet's principle, and runoff elections. Public Choice, 1981, 36, 89–114.Google Scholar
Gibbard, A.Manipulation of voting schemes. Econometrica, 1973, 41, 587–601.Google Scholar
Gretlein, R. J., & Niemi, R. G. A theorem on approval voting and the Condorcet alternative. Unpublished, 1984.Google Scholar
Merrill, S. A comparison of multicandidate electoral systems using optimal voting strategies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Public Choice Society, Savannah, Georgia, March 24-26, 1983.Google Scholar
Niemi, R. G., & Frank, A. Q.Sophisticated voting under the plurality procedure. In Ordeshook, P. C. & Shepsle, K. A. (Eds.). Political equilibrium. Boston: Kluwer Nijhoff, 1982.Google Scholar
Nurmi, H.Voting procedures: A summary analysis. British Journal of Political Science, 1983, 12, 181–208.Google Scholar
Satterthwaite, M. A.Strategy-proofness and Arrow's conditions: existence and correspondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare function. Journal of Economic Theory, 1975, 10, 187–217.Google Scholar
Tullock, G.Communication. American Political Science Review, 1979, 73, 551–552.Google Scholar