Models of political competition portray political candidates as seeking the support of the median voter to win elections by majority voting. In practice, political candidates seek supermajorities rather than majorities based on support of the median voter. We study the political benefits from...

We study communication in committees selecting one of two alternatives when consensus is required and agents have private information about their preferences. Delaying the decision is costly, so a form of multiplayer war of attrition emerges. Waiting allows voters to express the intensity of...

The author proposes a two-round process called minority voting to allocate public projects in a polity. In the first round, a society decides by a simple majority decision whether to provide the public project. If the proposal in the first round is rejected, the process ends. Otherwise the...

The author proposes a two-round process called minority voting to allocate public projects in a polity. In the first round, a society decides by a simple majority decision whether to provide the public project. If the proposal in the first round is rejected, the process ends. Otherwise the...

We propose a two-stage process called minority voting to allocate public projects in a polity. In the first period, a society decides by a simple majority decision whether to provide the public project. If the proposal in the first period is rejected, the process ends. Otherwise the process...

When making collektive desicions, principals (voters or districts) typically benefit by strategically delegating their bargaining and voting power to representatives different from themselves. There are conflicting views in the literature, however, of whether such a delegate should be...

Past analyses of the U.S. Constitutional Convention have relied strictly on votes recorded for the states or a relatively small number of roll calls. We construct a new dataset covering delegate votes on over 600 roll calls. We utilize the data in several ways. First, we use the votes to...