Pre-Analysis Plan for a Survey Experiment on Committees, Voting Rules and Voters' Beliefs

Many institutional environments share two common features: Decisions are made by a group of representatives (a committee) and decision-making takes place by secret ballot. Yet, even a secret ballot does not guarantee complete anonymity. As long as the observer has information about the committee’s joined decision and the employed voting rule, some information about representatives’ vote choices is leaked. Probability theory and Bayes’ Theorem in particular suggest that the amount of learning that is possible is a function of the voting rule, the size of the committee and the observer’s prior belief about representatives’ vote choices. Using a survey experiment we evaluate if voters are Bayesian learners and update prior beliefs about representatives' behavior in a committee using knowledge about the committee's joined decision. The experiment is implemented in the German Internet Panel wave 24 (July 2016).