Introduction

In this final chapter, I recommend other scholars to those who want a more formal approach to these issues. Next, I show that all the instability and manipulation results for the polity have parallels for the economy, but that there is a double standard which endorses the results for the polity but rejects them for the economy. Finally, I return to the hall of quotations, with answers to the new academic attack on democracy.

Those looking for a more formal approach can turn for complementary insights to Sen and his constructive social choice theory, beginning with his Nobel Lecture (1999). Sen reports that the first response to Arrow's theorem was, in politics pessimism about democratic decision making, and in economics despair about evaluating social welfare. The background to Arrow's theorem was Robbins's incredible claims that every mind is inscrutable to every other mind and that no common denominator of feelings is possible. Sen's diagnosis, made in many rich formal contributions over several decades, is that the impossibility is due to unjustified informational restrictions: “It is not surprising that the rejection of interpersonal comparisons must cause difficulties for reasoned social decision, since the claims of different persons, who make up the society, have to be assessed against each other” (365). He also points out that Arrow's original impossibility result should be no surprise, as in aiming to identify a unique rule one may undershoot and yield multiple possibilities, or one may, as did Arrow, overshoot and yield none.