Tucks efficacious set and responsibility for party coalitions: In his book Free Riding Richard Tuck defend instrumental voting and argue against the claim that voting is an Olsonian problem. His conclusion is that it is rational for everyone to vote, which he support in Chapter 2 Voting and Other Thresholds through two main concepts: 1- The Efficacious Set: the number of votes needed form a candidate to win the elections under majority rule or plurality rule. Members of this set are causally and equally responsible for the election outcome. For example, in a two-candidates election (A and B) and 1000 voters, B received 360 votes, A in this case won the election with 640 votes. The efficacious set in this scenario is 361 votes, because the moment A gets one vote more than what B got, A wins the election. According to Tuck, under majority or plurality rule it is easy to prove that the membership in the efficacious set is necessary for voters to be equally and equally responsible for voting outcomes. Nevertheless, under proportional representation it is more complicated to talk about the efficacious set due to lack of transparency. Under proportional representation (PR) the position is more complicated ad it may be quite hard to talk about the properties of an efficacious set; in my view, this greater complication and lack of transparency is in itself a substantial– though not necessarily decisive– argument against PR 2- The redundant causation concept: As Tuck claims, if C is causal to E, and E happened without the occurrence of C due to other events that led to E, C is still sufficiently causal for E. The aim of this paper is to explore and argue for voters responsibility under proportional representation. The result is that voters are sufficiently causal for party coalitions which take place in the parliament after elections outcomes are announced. The following outline is preferable: 1- Explain and describe the efficacious set, and why membership in this set is crucial for being responsible of the election outcome. 2- Describe what is proportional representation, with the German electoral system as an example. 3- Describe transparency in Tucks view which is voting under uncertainty, there is no full information case in proportional representation, which causes voters to vote without knowing what their elected candidate or party will engage into after winning. 4- Formulate the question: are voters who are members of the efficacious set responsible for party coalitions in the German parliament? Taking into consideration that German voting ballot form (vote 1 for chosen candidate and vote 2 for chosen party). 5- Provide a counter argument, to the claim that voters are eventually responsible for coalitions, even if not directly. Their votes eventually were enough to get winning parties to the parliament, which consequently allowed parties to form coalitions. Minimum 15 references from academic journals and articles. The following references list is important: 1- Free Riding by Richard Tuck. 2- German Bundestag articles and report The following references are course related and may contain some related arguments: 1- Sharing Responsibility, Michael J. Zimmerman. 2- In Our Name: The Ethics of Democracy by Eric Anthony Beerbohm, Chapter 9 Democratic Complicity. 3- Against Democracy by Jason Brennan. 4- The Ethics of Voting by Jason Brennan. 5- Responsibility Voids by Mathew Braham and Martin van Hees. 6- Anatomy of Moral Responsibility by Mathew Braham and Martin van Hees.
Show more