Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional Voting Models

TLDR

Nearly thirty years of research on social choice has produced a large body of theoretical results, yet most models are atomistic and institutionally sparse, with little endogenous treatment of institutional arrangements. This paper gives institutional properties more prominence, aiming to demonstrate how institutional arrangements can conspire with individual preferences to produce structure‑induced equilibrium. The study focuses on three organizational aspects: a committee system, a jurisdictional arrangement, and an amendment control rule that constrains subunit autonomy.

Abstract

Nearly thirty years of research on social choice has produced a large body of theoretical results. The underlying structure of the models that have generated these results is highly atomistic and institutionally sparse. While attention has been devoted to the mechanisms by which individual revealed preferences are aggregated into a social choice, rarely are other aspects of institutional arrangements treated endogenously. In this paper institutional properties are given more prominence. In particular, I focus on three aspects of organization: (1) a division-of-labor arrangement called a committee system; (2) a specialization-of-labor system called a jurisdictional arrangement; and (3) a monitoring mechanism by which a parent organization constrains the autonomy of its subunits called an amendment control rule. The conceptual language has a legislative flavor but, in fact, the concepts are broadly applicable to diverse organizational forms. The principal thrust of this paper is a demonstration of the ways institutional arrangements may conspire with the preferences of individuals to produce structure-induced equilibrium.