=== Peter Loewen: "Even the Greatest Ruffian: Behavioural Economics and Politics Around the World" === Key question: what motivates people to vote, even when doing so is costly? Thesis: "The insights from behaviour economics can teach us about why people participate electorally" Sees Adam Smith as a behavioural economist * We derive sorrow from the sorrow of others * It's not just the virtuous and humane who feel such empathy We overvalue what we happen to own, we massively discount the future, we get the probabilities of events wrong 1 - We care about others 2 - Our rationality is bounded Voting is paradoxical "obviously inconsequential" - one vote almost never makes a difference * Votes in aggregate affect the direction of countries At the aggregate level, it is hard to interpret what people are asking for The choice to vote reveals information about the values of individuals * "Small in isolation, grand in aggregation" Why do people vote? People make mistakes, not about subjective choices like which party to vote for * Rather, people tend to make choices that they themselves would not make in a state of reflection * Behavioural economists have identified many such anomalies (a) ambiguity aversion (preferring known risks to unknown risks) - people choose worse options when the odds of winning seem clearer In voting, you will rarely cause or break a tie * "If you are bad at math, and particularly bad at probabilities, you should be more likely to vote" Ambiguity experiment performed with large number of Swedish adults * Estimated econometrically the relationship between their level of ambiguity aversion and their participation in politics * The ambiguity averse vote more: "They make their vote count because they can't count" * Swedish voting records available for such analysis (b) Humans are hyperbolic discounters in personal health, financial planning, environmental protection * Good for voter turnout, however * Those who care less about the future are less likely to vote - demonstrated experimentally - impatient vote at 4/5 the rate of their more patient counterparts Voting is a collective action problem, there is no rational reason to do it, and yet millions of people do * "The paradox that nearly ate rational choice theory" * Answers: protect democracy, sense of duty People care about benefits to themselves, but also benefits to other people * Parties have bases of support Voters use the same concepts of identity for political parties as for other social groups: * Overestimate the size of parties to which they belong * Attributing positive characteristics to them that they don't attribute to other groups Affinity and antipathy motivates voting behaviour * People have social preferences - derive utility from the utility of others * In the rare event that your vote is decisive, it will affect many people * This makes it worthwhile, even though the odds are low Methodology * Test whether people care about others, via dictator games with real money * Provides data on how much people care about the well-being of others, at a cost to themselves * This data is then used to estimate political behaviour using econometric tools * "Story is always the same" * Regardless of ideology, voters who care about others are more likely to vote, in every country examined === Questions === 1) Surprising that it applies to conservatives? PL: People on the left tend to be more generous in dictator games * But concern for other people still motivates those on the right 2) Why do people not vote? PL: There was an experiment where some students were exposed to the paradox of voting, and they became less inclined to vote as a result 3) People who do grassroots political work do not vote less, it's not a substitution * "No consolation" in argument that young people are just engaging in different modes of political engagement 4) People who behave irrationally in terms of probability are more likely to vote; those who strongly discount the long-term benefits from success in an election are less likely to vote 5) Re: Australia - people are compelled to go to the polling booth, but many people spoil ballots * An initiative of the right - the propertied class 6) Role of social norms? * Work on organ donation PL: In the US, there are public records of whether you voted or not in every election where you have been eligible * Participation goes up a bit if you tell people you can find this, but it goes up by a lot more if you threaten to share the information with your neighbours 7) To what degree is voting behaviour influenced by material promises from candidates in exchange for support PL: In societies that allow provision of goods in exchange for voting, voting is actually rational From 1950s to 1980s in Canada, politicians lost the ability to transfer goods like cash, alcohol, or government jobs (paving crews, snowplowing crews) 8) PL: Big reasons we vote: Concern for others, duty, having voted before (get dragged once, be more likely to vote thereafter) 9) What about gerrymandered districts? * Or people who misunderstand the strategic impact of their voting 10) Is Toronto likely to experience a significantly higher voter turnout in the next mayoral election? PL: Yes - people now have an acute sense of what happens if they do not vote * 47% of Torontonians voted for him * 1/5 people in downtown districts voted for him too 11) What do you think [unintelligible] * Does empathy play a role in other forms of political participation, like participation in campaigns? PL: We can increase turnout by making it clear that they can make things better for others, or by teaching less math in school * "Empathy is a fundamental driver of political opinion, preference, and participation" * Social circumstance, desire for change, etc