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An Extension of Nurmi's Summary Analysis of Voting Procedures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Neil R. Paine
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Extract

Nurmi has analysed a number of voting procedures with respect to various criteria. The purpose of this Comment is to extend Nurmi's analysis to include the so-called social utility method of candidate selection. This method assumes that each voter has a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function defined over all candidates (i.e., that, roughly speaking, each voter can assign a cardinal rating to each candidate); then the winning candidate is the one with the greatest utility total.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , April 1988 , pp. 281 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Nurmi, Hannu, ‘Voting Procedures: A Summary Analysis’, British Journal of Political Science, 13 (1983), 181–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1951), pp. 32–3.Google Scholar

3 Paine, Neil R., ‘A Useful Approach to the Group Choice Problem’, Decision Sciences, 4 (1973), 21–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Harsanyi, John C., Rational Behaviour and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 48–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Weber, Robert J., ‘Comparison of Voting Systems’Google Scholar, Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 498A, New Haven, 1978; Merrill, Samuel III, ‘A Comparison of Efficiency of Multicandidate Electoral Systems’, American Journal of Political Science, 28 (1984), 23–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Paine, , ‘A Useful Approach to the Group Problem’, pp. 22–5.Google Scholar

7 Weber, , ‘Comparison of Voting Systems’Google Scholar; Merrill, , ‘A Comparison of Efficiency of Multicandidate Electoral Systems’.Google Scholar

8 Brams, Steven J. and Fishburn, Peter C., Approval Voting (Boston, Mass.: Birkhäuser, 1983), p. 86.Google Scholar

9 It could be argued that this example calls into question the Condorcet criteria as much as it does the social utility method. The Condorcet criteria ignore the intensities of voter preferences. In the real world it is not unlikely that voters 1, 2 and 3 would abstain, resulting in the election of B under any serious method.

10 Nurmi, , ‘Voting Procedures’, p. 193.Google Scholar

11 Nurmi, , ‘Voting Procedures’, pp. 195–6.Google Scholar

12 Nurmi, , ‘Voting Procedures’, p. 198.Google Scholar

13 Nurmi, , ‘Voting Procedures’, p. 200.Google Scholar

14 Nurmi, , ‘Voting Procedures’, p. 202.Google Scholar

15 Nurmi, , ‘Voting Procedures’, p. 206.Google Scholar

16 Nurmi, , ‘Voting Procedures’, p. 207.Google Scholar

17 Brams, and Fishburn, , Approval Voting, p. 85.Google Scholar

18 Merrill, , ‘A Comparison of Efficiency of Multicandidate Electoral Systems’, p. 37.Google Scholar