Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
选举问责、分配冲突与概率投票
Electoral accountability, distributive conflict, and probabilistic voting
摘要
Models of electoral accountability typically assume a politician provides a public good. Yet in many contexts, elected officials distribute private goods among voters with conflicting interests. We present a formal model to analyze this situation. An elected official allocates a rivalrous good to a number of voters, who each observe their own allocation but neither others’ allocations nor the official’s action. Each voter’s challenge is to determine whether the incumbent stole from other voters when deciding to sack or retain the incumbent. This problem can be resolved if voters retain the incumbent probabilistically, so that the vote of any voter from whom the incumbent steals is effectively up-weighted. However, this benefit of probabilistic voting also comes with a cost, since the fact that the incumbent may be sacked by mistake diminishes the allocation they are willing to provide to voters.
中文摘要
选举问责模型通常假设政治家提供公共产品。然而在许多情境中，民选官员会在利益冲突的选民之间分配私人产品。我们构建了一个正式模型来分析这种情况。一位民选官员将竞争性物品分配给若干选民，每位选民仅能观察到自身所得分配，既无法获知他人分配情况，也无法了解官员的具体行为。当决定是否罢免现任官员时，每位选民面临的挑战在于判断该官员是否侵占了其他选民的应得利益。若选民以概率化方式决定是否留任现任官员，这一问题便可得到解决——因为当官员侵占某位选民利益时，该选民的投票权重实际上会被提升。然而，这种概率化投票机制也伴随着代价：由于官员可能因误判而被罢免，这会降低其愿意向选民提供的分配额度。