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When Should the Majority Rule? Experimental Evidence for Madisonian Judgments in Five Cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2020

Alexander Bor Open the ORCID record for Alexander Bor [Opens in a new window] ,
Honorata Mazepus ,
Scott E. Bokemper  and
Peter DeScioli
Alexander Bor*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Department of Political Science, Bartholins allé 7, Aarhus C, 8000, Denmark
Honorata Mazepus
Affiliation:
Leiden University, Institute of Security and Global Affairs, The Hague, The Netherlands
Scott E. Bokemper
Affiliation:
Yale University, Center for the Study of American Politics, Institution for Social and Policy Studies, New Haven, CT, USA
Peter DeScioli
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University, Department of Political Science, Stony Brook, NY, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In democracies, majority-rule voting is an esteemed rule for collective decisions, but its hazards have recently become apparent after a series of controversial referendums and ascendant populist leaders. Here, we investigate people’s judgments about when voting is appropriate for collective decisions across five countries with diverse cultures and political institutions (Denmark, Hungary, India, Russia, and USA). Participants read scenarios in which individuals with conflicting preferences need to make a collective decision. They judged whether the group should decide by voting, consensus, leadership, or chance. We experimentally manipulated whether the group contains a vulnerable minority – a smaller number of people with more at stake than the majority. In all five countries, participants generally preferred voting without a vulnerable minority, with relatively greater support for voting in more democratic countries. But, when the group included a vulnerable minority, participants in all countries reduced their support for voting and instead preferred consensus.

Keywords

decision-makingminority groupsvotingpolitical psychology
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 41 - 50
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

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Footnotes

Citation of data: The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: doi: 10.7910/DVN/JNMDCO.

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