Communication as Voting

Abstract

This paper studies information aggregation in informal elections by examining a cheap-talk model with multiple senders and one receiver. Each sender observes a noisy private signal about an unknown state and sends a message; the receiver observes the message tally and chooses the final policy choice. Unlike in formal elections, the tally does not mechanically determine the policy. We establish an equilibrium no-conflict property according to which communication can reveal only information that induces the same preferred policy for both the receiver and the senders. Building on this property, we show that whether information aggregation and complete learning occur depends not only on the magnitude of the conflict of interest between the senders and the receiver but more fundamentally on the nature of that conflict. In particular, the presence of a disagreement state, in which the senders and the receiver have opposing policy preferences, precludes full information aggregation and complete learning even as the number of senders grows without bound. We also identify a discontinuity in information transmission relative to the implications of the existing literature. Finally, introducing a mediator can improve information transmission and restore efficiency.