Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Many scholars study the properties of voting rules, but few extend their studies to legislative institutions such as quorum requirements. This paper investigates the optimal quorum requirement between 1 and N, assuming that decisions are made by simple majority rule. Quorum requirements are evaluated by the probability that they fulfill one of four criteria: 1) the Pareto criterion, 2) a modified version of Rae’s criterion, 3) Expected Social Gain (a utilitarian criterion), and 4) a Non-Negative Representation criterion (a measure of how well the quorum represents the assembly). This paper shows that the optimal quorum according to all four criteria is typically no quorum requirement. However, the optimal quorum according to the third and fourth criterion is N, if non-voters are more likely to oppose the proposal than favor it. Such results have important implications for institutional design.