The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) supports for two years the research project "Voting by Veto" by Dr. Jan Sauermann at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics.

Voting by Veto is a two-stage voting mechanism for small and medium-sized groups. Initially every member of the group makes a proposal. This suggestions of group members, added to the status quo, form the amount of possibilities. By coincidence, the order of the votes is decided. In the next step, the members of the group eliminate the suggestions after one another. Once everyone has voted, there is only one winning alternative.

Voting by Veto has some theoretical features that can maybe make it a suitable decision mechanism   in difficult situations, for example in case of large social or economic heterogeneity.  Especially the possible prospect to be able to get more procedural fairness and distributional justice makes it considerable in situations with a high potential for conflicts. But at the moment, there is no empirical evidence about how the mechanism is actually working. The project strives to close this gap by using experimental methods.

Jan Sauermann is working as academic advice at the chair of Comparative Politics held by Prof. Dr. André Kaiser.
To find more information, you can visit the research project website.