Voting for voters: A model of electoral evolution

We model decision problems faced by the members of societies whose new memb ers are determined by vote. We examine a simple model: the founders and the candidates are fixed, the society operates and holds elections for a fixed number of periods, one vote is sufficient for admission, and voters can su pport as many candidates as they wish. We show through theorems and example s that interesting strategic behavior is implied by the dynamic structure o f the problem. In particular, the vote for friends may be postponed, and it may be advantageous to vote for enemies. We characterize all pure strategy Nash equilibria outcomes and show that they can also be obtained as subgam e perfect equilibria. We present conditions for existence of pure strategy (trembling hand) perfect equilibrium profiles and show that they always exi st in a two-stage scheme under appropriate assumptions on utilities. We dis cuss the need for further refinements and extensions of our game theoretic analysis. (C) 2001 Academic Press.