Group size, signaling and the effect of democracy

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelfagfællebedømt

A number of papers document that rules governing social dilemmas work better when implemented democratically than when imposed from above (the “effect of democracy”). This paper presents a theoretical model of the effect of democracy and uses laboratory experiments to test a key prediction emerging from the model, namely that the effect of democracy is stronger in small than in large communities. Results from a prisoner’s dilemma experiment show that an effect of democracy is present in groups of all sizes but decreases strongly and becomes less persistent as the number of group members increases. In some respects, therefore, democracy appears to work best in small groups.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftJournal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Vol/bind187
Sider (fra-til)258-273
Antal sider16
ISSN0167-2681
DOI
StatusUdgivet - jul. 2021

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
We thank seminar participants at the European Political Science Association (EPSA) - Annual Conference 2017 in Milan and at the 2018 Nordic Conference for Behavioral and Experimental Economics at University of Southern Denmark, for comments, Änne Hansmeyer and Kett Panther for excellent research assistance, Matthew Embrey, Guillaume Frechette and Sevgi Yuksel for making experimental software available, and Independent Research Fund Denmark (project 4182-00183 FSE) for financial support.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.

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