A Dividend of Democracy
- Autor(en)
- Thomas Markussen, Jean-Robert Tyran
- Abstrakt
Do democratically chosen rules lead to more cooperation and, hence, higher efficiency, than imposed rules? To discuss when such a “dividend of democracy” obtains, we review experimental studies in which material incentives remain stacked against cooperation (i.e., free-riding incentives prevail) despite adoption of cooperation-improving policies. While many studies find positive dividends of democracy across a broad range of cooperation settings, we also report on studies that find no dividend. We conclude that the existence of a dividend of democracy cannot be considered a stylized fact. We discuss three channels through which democracy can produce such a dividend: selection, signaling, and motivation. The evidence points to the role of “culture” in conditioning the operation of these channels. Accepting a policy in a vote seems to increase the legitimacy of a cooperation-inducing policy in some cultures but not in others.
- Organisation(en)
- Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Wiener Zentrum für Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung
- Externe Organisation(en)
- University of Copenhagen
- Seiten
- 235-243
- Anzahl der Seiten
- 9
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802207750.00039
- Publikationsdatum
- 11-2025
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 502027 Politische Ökonomie, 502057 Experimentelle Ökonomie
- Schlagwörter
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/1c5135c1-86ad-4f49-a69f-88e01a1f8cbe