Slacktivism

Ginzburg, Boris (2019): Slacktivism.

Abstract

Many countries have introduced e-government petitioning systems, in which a petition that gathers enough signatures triggers some political outcome. This paper models citizens who choose whether to sign a petition. Citizens are imperfectly informed about the petition's chance of bringing change. The number of citizens approaches infinity, while the cost of signing is positive but low, falling within certain bounds. In the limit, participation is increasing in the required quota of signatures. Social welfare is decreasing in the quota. Information aggregation may fail if individual signals are sufficiently uninformative.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: online petitions, collective action, voting, political participation
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior; H - Public Economics > H4 - Publicly Provided Goods > H41 - Public Goods

References

Aguiar-Conraria, Luís and Pedro C Magalhães, Referendum design, quorum rules and turnout, Public Choice, 2010, 144 (1-2), 63-81.

Ambrus, Attila, Ben Greiner, and Anne Sastro, The case for nil votes: Voter behavior under asymmetric information in compulsory and voluntary voting systems, Journal of Public Economics, 2017, 154, 34-48.

Banerjee, Abhijit and Rohini Somanathan, A simple model of voice, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2001, 116 (1), 189-227.

Barbieri, Stefano and David A Malueg, Threshold uncertainty in the private-information subscription game, Journal of Public Economics, 2010, 94 (11-12), 848-861.

Battaglini, Marco, Public protests and policy making, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2017, 132 (1), 485-549.

Battaglini, Marco and Roland Benabou, Trust, coordination, and the industrial organization of political activism, Journal of the European Economic Association, 2003, 1 (4), 851-889.

Battaglini, Marco, Rebecca Morton, and Thomas Palfrey, Eciency, equity, and timing of voting mechanisms, American political science Review, 2007, 101 (3), 409-424.

Borgers, Tilman, Costly voting, American Economic Review, 2004, 94 (1), 57-66.

Chamberlain, Gary and Michael Rothschild, A note on the probability of casting a decisive vote, Journal of Economic Theory, 1981, 25 (1), 152-162.

Deutsche Welle, Citizen petitions the German people's 'hotline' to government, http://www.dw.com/en/ citizen-petitions-the-german-peoples-hotline-to-government/ a-38877238, 2017. Accessed on 12 June 2018.

Feddersen, Timothy and Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information, Econometrica, 1997, 65 (5), 1029-1058.

Grover, Caitlin, E-petitions, Parliament Library & Information Service, Parliament of Victoria, 2016.

Herrera, Helios and Andrea Mattozzi, Quorum and turnout in referenda, Journal of the European Economic Association, 2010, 8 (4), 838-871.

Krasteva, Silvana and Huseyin Yildirim, (Un) Informed charitable giving, Journal of Public Economics, 2013, 106, 14-26.

Krishna, Vijay and John Morgan, Voluntary voting: Costs and benefits, Journal of Economic Theory, 2012, 147 (6), 2083-2123.

Laussel, Didier and Thomas R Palfrey, Ecient equilibria in the voluntary contributions mechanism with private information, Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2003, 5 (3), 449-478.

Levine, David K and Thomas R Palfrey, The paradox of voter participation? A laboratory study, American political science Review, 2007, 101 (1), 143-158.

Lindner, Ralf and Ulrich Riehm, Electronic petitions and institutional modernization. International parliamentary e-petition systems in comparative perspective, JeDEM-eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 2009, 1 (1), 1-11.

Lohmann, Susanne, A signaling model of informative and manipulative political action, American Political Science Review, 1993, 87 (2), 319-333.

Lohmann, Susanne, Information aggregation through costly political action, The American Economic Review, 1994, pp. 518-530.

Maniquet, François and Massimo Morelli, Approval quorums dominate participation quorums, Social Choice and Welfare, 2015, 45 (1), 1-27.

Martimort, David and Humberto Moreira, Common agency and public good provision under asymmetric information, Theoretical Economics, 2010, 5 (2), 159-213.

McBride, Michael, Discrete public goods under threshold uncertainty, Journal of Public Economics, 2006, 90 (6-7), 1181-1199.

Menezes, Flavio M, Paulo K Monteiro, and Akram Temimi, Private provision of discrete public goods with incomplete information, Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2001, 35 (4), 493-514.

Mickoleit, Arthur, Social media use by governments: A policy primer to discuss trends, identify policy opportunities and guide decision makers, OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, 2014, (26), 0_1.

Myatt, David P, A theory of voter turnout, 2015.

Nitzan, Shmuel and Richard E Romano, Private provision of a discrete public good with uncertain cost, Journal of Public Economics, 1990, 42 (3), 357-370.

Palfrey, Thomas R and Howard Rosenthal, Participation and the provision of discrete public goods: a strategic analysis, Journal of Public Economics, 1984, 24 (2), 171-193.

Palfrey, Thomas R and Howard Rosenthal, Voter participation and strategic uncertainty, American Political Science Review, 1985, 79 (1), 62-78.

Robbins, Herbert, A remark on Stirling's formula, The American mathematical monthly, 1955, 62 (1), 26-29.

UK Parliament, Petitions, https://petition.parliament.uk/, 2018. Accessed on 12 June 2018.