1. Institutional sources of policy bias: A computational investigation.
- Author
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Ragan, Robi
- Subjects
- *
DEMOCRACY , *GOVERNMENT policy , *APPORTIONMENT (Election law) , *POLITICAL doctrines , *ECONOMIC systems , *ELECTIONS - Abstract
Representative democracy translates the preferences of the electorate into policy outcomes. Individual voters do not directly vote on policy; rather, their elected representatives create and establish policy. How well do the institutions of representative democracy translate the preferences of the electorate into policy? Is there any systematic bias in a representative democracy system? After formulating a series of computational models it appears that the degree to which legislative districts are ‘gerrymandered’ with respect to preferences about the policy is a source of policy bias. To illustrate the phenomenon, household income is used as a proxy for voters' preferences with respect to redistribution. Even when the majority of voters are in favor of redistribution, if districts are constructed with a sufficient level of conservative gerrymandering, the policy outcome under representative democracy will favor far less redistribution than the policy outcome under direct democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
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