Alternative libertarian claims and Sen's paradox

Abstract

One of the ways of escaping from Sen's impossibility of a Paretian liberal is to weaken Sen's libertarian condition imposed on the collective choice rule. This paper compares three different versions of a revised libertarian claim: (1) Gibbard's theory of alienable rights (1974), (2) Gaertner's and Krüger's approach of self-supporting preferences (1981), and (3) a modification of Gibbard's theory which combines a weakened condition for alienating rights with the requirement of unconditional preferences. A new possibility theorem is obtained for version (3). It is shown that all three approaches are logically independent. Furthermore, it turns out that, under the original as well as the modified version of Gibbard's theory, the alienation of rights can be achieved through strategic misrepresentation of preferences by other members of society, whereas the concept of self-supporting preferences does not admit this kind of manipulation of rights. Approach (2) appears, therefore, to agree more closely with our intuitions concerning the nature of individual rights.