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Do Individuals Value Distributional Fairness? How Inequality Affects Majority Decisions

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Abstract

The so-called chaos theorems imply that, under most preference configurations, majority voting in n-dimensional policy spaces is theoretically unrestricted. Empirical research, however, shows an apparent stability of democratic decisions. Recent theoretical developments have emphasized social preferences as a possible explanation for overcoming majority rule’s instability problem. Hence, it is assumed that individuals not only maximize their own well-being, but also value distributional fairness. However, there is little experimental research into the influence of social preferences on majority decisions. This article presents findings from laboratory experiments on majority decisions in two-dimensional policy spaces with a systematic variation of the fairness properties of the incentive structures. The results show that distributional fairness is an important motivational factor in democratic decisions.

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Notes

  1. Recent neuro-economical findings back this claim. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Tricomi et al. (2010) find evidence for the existence of inequality-averse social preferences in the human brain.

  2. The core comprises the set of undominated alternatives. An alternative is undominated if no coalition has both the power and the desire to implement another alternative under the decision rule in place.

  3. Locations of subjects’ ideal points are common knowledge in Wilson’s (2008) experiments. However, subjects do not learn the payoffs of the other committee members. Hence, like all the experiments discussed so far, Wilson’s design also establishes incomplete information among subjects.

  4. Performance-dependent monetary incentives are important to preserve the construct validity of experimental results. Thus, financial incentives increase the attention of participants to the task, especially in later periods of the repeatedly played games (Morton and Williams 2010, p. 355).

  5. In the meantime, the other four committee members see a waiting screen while the agenda setter makes her decision.

  6. If the agenda setter makes a proposal, her vote is automatically counted in favor of her own proposal in the subsequent voting stage.

  7. For further information on the induced incentives including the exact coordinates of ideal points and equations of the payout functions consult Supplementary Material 1.

  8. See Supplementary Material 1 for a plot of average payouts in the policy spaces of the experimental treatments.

  9. Supplementary Material 2 analyses the predictive power of two point predictions based on very simple fairness models. Firstly, I test whether committees choose the point that maximizes the lowest payout in the committee. Secondly, I test whether committees choose the point that minimizes the average distance to all committee members’ ideal-points. The experimental evidence clearly rejects both point predictions.

  10. Data and replication code for the analyses is available at the journal’s Dataverse page, doi:10.7910/DVN/LTJIDX.

  11. Instructions can be found in Supplementary Material 3.

  12. Circles have a radius of two standard errors of mean decisions in the five-period intervals. Supplementary Material 4 contains further information on the computation of confidence intervals.

  13. McKelvey et al.’s “competitive solution” (1978) was one of the earliest outlines of a preference-based constraint on majority rule. Committee decision making is conceived as a coalition formation game and the bargaining process behind the voting decision induces stability in decision making. However, the competitive solution was abandoned by its authors in light of negative experimental evidence (McKelvey and Ordeshook 1983).

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Acknowledgements

This work has received generous funding from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (Az. 20.12.0.075). Financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the Cologne Laboratory for Economic Research is also gratefully acknowledged. I would like to thank Holger Reinermann for his excellent research assistance. André Kaiser, Bernhard Kittel, the participants in the Preference Formation and Formal Models in Politics Panel at the ECPR General Conference 2014 in Glasgow and the participants of the first Gothenburg–Barcelona experimental workshop 2015 in Gothenburg and three anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University of Cologne, PO Box 411020, 50870, Cologne, Germany

    Jan Sauermann

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Correspondence to Jan Sauermann.

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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the University of Cologne and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Sauermann, J. Do Individuals Value Distributional Fairness? How Inequality Affects Majority Decisions. Polit Behav 40, 809–829 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-017-9424-6

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