Abstract
We investigate resolute voting rules that always rank two alternatives strictly and avoid social indecision. Resolute majority rules differ from the standard majority rule in that whenever both alternatives win the same number of votes, a tie-breaking function is used to determine the outcome. We provide axiomatic characterizations of resolute majority rules or resolute majority rules with a quorum. Resoluteness axiom is used in all these results. The other axioms are weaker than those considered in the characterization of the majority rule by May (1952 Econometrica, 20:680–684). In particular, instead of May’s positive responsiveness, we consider a much weaker monotonicity axiom.
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Notes
See also Llamazares (2006) for some related characterization results. Pauly (2013) considers a different quorum constraint introduced by García-Lapresta and Llamazares (2001), which requires at least as many positive votes as the quorum. Majority rules with this quorum constraint are characterized by Pauly (2013) using “strategy-proofness”.
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We appreciate the editor in charge and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are ours. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2013S1A3A2055391) and from the Center for Distributive Justice in Institute of Economic Research, Seoul National University.
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Jeong, H., Ju, BG. Resolute majority rules. Theory Decis 82, 31–39 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-016-9563-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-016-9563-y