This time next year, millions of Americans will
go to the polls to determine who will be the next president of the United
States of America. The citizen’s duty to help determine the political
trajectory of the nation is what comprises the core of the democratic ideal. So
the rhetoric goes. The common discourse in the classical literature and
research often characterizes voting in platitudes such as these: restricting
the reasoning of voters to the normative realm. While the common discussion of
voting in normative terms leaves much to be desired, it has provide space for
the development of formal theories of why individuals vote in elections. This
is the principle aim of my research.
In many ways, this research sits at the
confluence of my many research interests. I had always been drawn to the study
of Political Science, and the desire to understand the nature of political
relationships among individuals; however I was always left me yearning for a more
formalized methodology. It was this desire for that lead me to pursue my
studies in Economics. The formalization of models, and the efforts to test
theories using empirical and experimental studies provided the rigor that I had
always desired. As continued with my studies, I was still drawn to the topics
of Political Science, but with the aim to apply my newfound analytical
framework. I am quite grateful that the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program
has allowed me to do this.
Exploring voting through the lens of Economics
has provided a wonderful foray into this interdisciplinary field. Primarily my
efforts focused on how to contextualize much of the Political Theory that I had
studied in the past within the applicable Economic Theory. This leads me to
reading publications from economists, and mathematical political scientists – a
field that I have pleasantly been introduced to during my current research –
who have worked on the formalization of the theories of voting. I have come to
find that the topics of elections and voting are of great interest within a
number of fields, such as Game Theory and Mechanism Design, and I have found a
wealth of literature that has fed my own growing interest. Yet, reading the
works of others is only beginning of my research efforts. My real work begins
when I put pen to paper, and begin playing with different models of voting
behavior and electoral systems. This past week it was a proof of the stability
of binomial candidate preferences, next it will be trying to model the
distribution of voters with heterogeneous preferences faced with this choice
set. It has been a joy to watch my research develop throughout this semester,
and am quite grateful to have this opportunity.
