Forming Voting Blocs and Coalitions as a Prisoner's Dilemma: A Possible Theoretical Explanation for Political Instability

Andrew Gelman
2003 Contributions in Economic Analysis & Policy  
Individuals in a committee or election can increase their voting power by forming coalitions. This behavior is shown here to yield a prisoner's dilemma, in which a subset of voters can increase their power, while reducing average voting power for the electorate as a whole. This is an unusual form of the prisoner's dilemma in that cooperation is the selfish act that hurts the larger group. Under a simple model, the privately optimal coalition size is approximately 1.4 times the square root of
more » ... number of voters. When voters' preferences are allowed to differ, coalitions form only if voters are approximately politically balanced. We propose a dynamic view of coalitions, in which groups of voters choose of their own free will to form and disband coalitions, in a continuing struggle to maintain their voting power. This is potentially an endogenous mechanism for political instability, even in a world where individuals' (probabilistic) preferences are fixed and known.
doi:10.2202/1538-0645.1185 fatcat:4exn6zayffayvcngt46qri7xdm