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政治分肥、选民投票率与不平等:一项实验研究

Pork barrel politics, voter turnout, and inequality: An experimental study
Games and Economic Behavior · 2026 · Jens Großer、Thorsten Giertz

中文摘要

我们在投票需要付出成本、由两名候选人竞选的重复多数决选举中,以实验方法研究政治分肥问题。候选人通过在预算支出中偏袒部分选民而忽视其他选民,形成相互区隔的支持者群体。与强制投票相比,自愿投票会引致平均规模更大、目标更为狭隘的偏袒,从而在其他方面完全相同的选民之间造成更大的不平等。与我们的预测相反,担任候选人的被试倾向于通过反复偏袒自己的专属支持者、回避对手的支持者来培育政策极化。在强制投票下,他们则会对另一个单独的选民子集容忍一定的额外政策重叠。在与理论的关联方面,基于一个外生于本实验估计的噪声参数取值,分位反应均衡(QRE)能够很好地刻画自愿投票率的实际水平与模式。重要且出人意料的是,在合理的假设下,我们发现我们的政治体博弈存在唯一的QRE解;这些博弈既包括政策制定阶段,也包括可能从该阶段产生的众多可能选举中的每一种。

Abstract

We experimentally study pork barrel politics in repeated two-candidate majoritarian elections with costly voting. Candidates form distinct supporter groups by favoring some voters in budget spending and ignoring others. Relative to compulsory voting, voluntary voting induces on average larger, more narrowly targeted favors and therefore more inequality among otherwise identical voters. Against our prediction, candidate participants tend to cultivate policy polarization by repeatedly favoring their exclusive supporters and avoiding those of the opponent. With compulsory voting, they tolerate some additional policy overlap for a separate subset of voters. Relating to theory, actual levels and patterns of voluntary turnout are well captured by quantal response equilibrium (QRE) for a noise parameter estimate external to our experiment. Importantly, and surprisingly, for reasonable assumption we find unique QRE solutions for our polity games, which include the policymaking stage and each of the many possible elections that can emerge from that stage.
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