Political Analysis Advance Access published online on September 14, 2007
Political Analysis, doi:10.1093/pan/mpm024
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The Constrained Instability of Majority Rule: Experiments on the Robustness of the Uncovered Set
Department of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 e-mail: wbianco{at}indiana.edu
Department of Political Science, University of Kansas, 504 Blake Hall, Lawrence, KS 66044 e-mail: mlynch{at}ku.edu
Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, Campus Box 1063, One Brooking Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130 e-mail: gjmiller{at}wustl.edu
e-mail: sened{at}wustl.edu (corresponding author)
The uncovered set has frequently been proposed as a solution concept for majority rule settings. This paper tests this proposition using a new technique for estimating uncovered sets and a series of experiments, including five-player computer-mediated experiments and 35-player paper-format experiments. The results support the theoretic appeal of the uncovered set. Outcomes overwhelmingly lie in or near the uncovered set. Furthermore, when preferences shift, outcomes track the uncovered set. Although outcomes tend to occur within the uncovered set, they are not necessarily stable; majority dominance relationships still produce instability, albeit constrained by the uncovered set.
Authors' note: We thank Matthew M. Schneider for research assistance. We thank James Holloway, Tse-Min Lin, Jim Granato, Randall L. Calvert, Rick K. Wilson, faculty and students of the Juan March Institute, and reviewers of Political Analysis for their very helpful comments and suggestions.
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