2025/12/12 by Chad Kendall, John G. Matsusaka · 2 voices
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Game Theory and Voting Systems #Local Government Finance and Decentralization
paper · doi:10.1093/jeea/jvaf059
openalex publication_date 2025/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/12/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract Do voters see democracy entirely in spatial terms, as a tradeoff of conflicting interests, or do they also view it as a search for the “common good”, as some democracy theorists have long conjectured? We develop a model in which voters have preferences over both common-good and spatial payoffs, and provide a novel method to disentangle the two. Estimating the model on California ballot propositions from 1986 to 2020, we find that 74% of voters placed significant weight on the common good and that partisan polarization roughly doubled over the time period, mainly due to Democrats drifting left.