The chaos theorems suggest that majority voting is theoretically unstable under most preferences. However, empirical evidence shows democratic stability.
This article addresses this gap by conducting laboratory experiments on two-dimensional policy spaces with varied incentive structures.
Data & Methods: Laboratory experiments varying fairness properties of incentives.
Key Findings: Distributional fairness significantly influences voting behavior in majority rule systems.
The results demonstrate that individuals respond to the fairness dimension, helping explain the stability observed in democratic decision-making. These findings highlight distributional preferences as a crucial factor mitigating the theoretical problems associated with multidimensional voting.
| Do Individuals Value Distributional Fairness? How Inequality Affects Majority Decisions was authored by Jan Sauermann. It was published by Springer in Pol. Behav. in 2018. |
