Extremely readable OA paper in PNAS, Behavioral experiments on biased voting in networks:
Many distributed collective decision-making processes must balance diverse individual preferences with a desire for collective unity. We report here on an extensive session of behavioral experiments on biased voting in networks of individuals. In each of 81 experiments, 36 human subjects arranged in a virtual network were financially motivated to reach global consensus to one of two opposing choices. No payments were made unless the entire population reached a unanimous decision within 1 min, but different subjects were paid more for consensus to one choice or the other, and subjects could view only the current choices of their network neighbors, thus creating tensions between private incentives and preferences, global unity, and network structure. Along with analyses of how collective and individual performance vary with network structure and incentives generally, we find that there are well-studied network topologies in which the minority preference consistently wins globally; that the presence of "extremist" individuals, or the awareness of opposing incentives, reliably improve collective performance; and that certain behavioral characteristics of individual subjects, such as "stubbornness," are strongly correlated with earnings.
To some extent this shouldn't be that much of a surprise. How many French wanted to banish the Catholic Church from national life in the 1790s? Here's the bottom line:
Network structure influenced collective performance in a variety of notable ways. The Cohesion experiments were considerably harder for the subjects than the Minority Power experiments; only 31 of 54 of the former were solved compared with 24 of 27 of the latter (difference significant at P 0.001). Furthermore, in all 24 of the successfully completed Minority Power experiments, the global consensus reached was in fact the preferred color of the well-connected minority. Together these results suggest that not only can an influentially positioned minority group reliably override the majority preference, but that such a group can in fact facilitate global unity.
If you don't read the paper, just
. Look at the "C" group in particular, where "connected" minorities with strong preferences are the norm.
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I think this underscores the importance of mercantile populations in achieving growth liftoff. When present--in early Holland or England for example--they serve as a disproportionate check against Leviathan and encourage the sort of pro-market institutions critical for growth. Populations without this check--France, Spain--tend to remain state-dependent in the growth process.
Democracy is not enough; in the absence of market-oriented individuals, democracies allow the predations of small groups. It was only until India gained a sufficient population of voters with commercial values that regulations started improving.