Abstract
Various conditions from social choice theory are discussed as they apply to actual voting procedures. It is found that none of these conditions makes a very interesting distinction among actual voting rules. Further, many of these conditions are argued to be not universally acceptable. It is then shown that, especially in cases in which there are more than two candidates, strategies are an essential part of voting, and particularly strategies of the type associated with ‘coordination problems’ as studied by Thomas C. Schelling. Some tentative acceptability conditions for voting rules are set forth which attempt to take coordination strategies into account. These are also found to be not universally acceptable.
I read a primitive version of this paper under the title ‘What is a Fair Voting Procedure?’ at the Colloquium in Exact Philosophy, McGill University, 1969–70.
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Notes
The ‘alternative candidate ballot system’, as described here, is a simplified version of the Australian voting system. See Douglas W. Rea, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, revised edition, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1971, p. 24.
Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1956, pp. 37–38.
Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, second edition, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1963. This book will be referred to in this paper as ‘SC & IV’.
For arguments against the identification of transitivity with rationality, see Duncan Black, ‘On Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem’, The Journal of law and Economics 12 (1969), 227–48.
Amartya K. Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, Holden-Day, San Fransisco, 1970, pp. 48–52. This is the most complete review to date of the literature on social choice. It will be referred to as ‘CC & SW’.
K. O. May, ‘A Set of Independent Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Simple Majority Decision’, Econometrica 20 (1952), 680–84.
This system is discussed in Alex C. Michalos, ‘Decision-Making in Committees’, American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970), 91–106.
As Sen points out, the condition Arrow calls “independence of irrelevant alternatives” includes the requirement of non-cardinality. (CC & SW, pp. 89–90) So these voting procedures would not meet Arrow’s condition, as they involve assigning weights to alternatives.
Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1960.
Peter G. J. Pulzer, Political Representation and Elections: Parties and Voting in Great Britain, Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1967, p. 57.
Ibid., p. 96.
Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, p. 90.
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© 1973 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
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Beatty, H. (1973). Voting Rules and Coordination Problems. In: Bunge, M. (eds) The Methodological Unity of Science. Theory and Decision Library, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2667-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2667-3_9
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