Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:07:14.043Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - The Social Choice Problem: Impossibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

Michael C. Munger
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
Kevin M. Munger
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access

Summary

George: It is unthinkable that [someone] could manipulate the democratic process.

Dotty: Democracy is all in the head…

George: …Furthermore, I had a vote!

Dotty: It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.

Tom Stoppard, Jumpers, Act I, p. 35.

Until now, we have made two simplifying assumptions. First, society makes all of its collective decisions by some variant of majority rule. Second, spatial utility functions can represent preference orderings. However “social choice” theorists work in a much broader context than spatial preferences or majority rule. Their goal is to select the most general possible representation of preferences, and the most encompassing possible conception of institutions. These generalizations require some careful definitions.

Social Choice

Social choice analyzes alternative decision rules, or deciding how to decide. We have discussed in this book a hierarchy of choices, and it is important to understand the differences.

  1. Deciding how to decide how to decide: Are we a group? Are we going to kill each other, or cooperate? How will we constitute ourselves?

  2. Deciding how to decide: What decision rule will we use, and what are the rules for changing the rules, in our constitution?

  3. Deciding: What will be our policies and everyday political decision about speed limits, budgets, and regulation of pollution, in the context of a constituted group with relatively fixed formal decision rules and amendment processes?

Type
Chapter
Information
Choosing in Groups
Analytical Politics Revisited
, pp. 135 - 158
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×