Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Title: Approval vs. Participation Quorums
Author-Name: Dmitriy Vorobyev
Author-Email: dmitriy.vorobyev@prigo.cz
Author-Name: Azamat Valei
Author-Email: 
Author-Name: Andrei Matveenko
Author-Email: andrei.matveenko@uni-mannheim.de
Classification-JEL: D71, D72
Keywords: voting, participation quorum, approval quorum

Abstract: Using a pivotal costly voting model of elections between a status quo and a challenger alternative, 
we compare participation and approval quorum requirements in
terms of how they shape voter incentives to cast votes, and how they ultimately
impact voter turnout, election outcomes, and welfare. We first show that approval
and participation quorum restrictions of equal strictness result in at most two types
of stable non-trivial equilibria: “abstention,” in which status quo supporters 
strategically abstain from voting, and “coordination,” in which they vote with positive
probability. While abstention equilibria are always identical in the two quorum
settings, coordination equilibria may differ, but only when the cost of voting is 
sufficiently low and status quo support among voters is neither extremely high or low,
nor is it close to the degree of support for the challenger. We show that, in those
cases, the difference in the outcomes of interest between approval and participation
quorum settings is quantitatively small. The main difference between the two settings 
therefore arises from the fact that, under an approval quorum, coordination
equilibrium exists for a narrower range of status quo support levels than under a
participation quorum. We discuss the implications of these findings for designing
optimal quorum restrictions, suggesting that choosing an approval quorum over a
participation quorum and setting its strictness close to half of the number of voters,
or setting no quorum restrictions at all, are often welfare maximizing choices.


Note: 
Length: 29
Creation-Date: 2023-07
Revision-Date:
File-URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp438
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:CRCTR224_2023_438