Jean Francois Laslier
Paris School of Economics
48 boulevard Jourdan
75014 Paris
France
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Institutional Affiliation: Paris School of Economics
Information about this author at RePEc
NBER Working Papers and Publications
May 2016 | Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants
with Alessandra Casella, Antonin Macé: w22231
In polarized committees, majority voting disenfranchises the minority. Allowing voters to spend freely a fixed budget of votes over multiple issues restores some minority power. However, it also creates a complex strategic scenario: a hide-and-seek game between majority and minority voters that corresponds to a decentralized version of the Colonel Blotto game. We offer theoretical results and bring the game to the laboratory. The minority wins as frequently as theory predicts, despite subjects deviating from equilibrium strategies. Because subjects understand the logic of the game — minority voters must concentrate votes unpredictably — the exact choices are of secondary importance, a result that vouches for the robustness of the voting rule to strategic mistakes. Published: Alessandra Casella & Jean-François Laslier & Antonin Macé, 2017. "Democracy for Polarized Committees: The Tale of Blotto's Lieutenants," Games and Economic Behavior, vol 106, pages 239-259. citation courtesy of 
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