Reflections on Arrow’s theorem and voting rules

These reflections, written in honor of Kenneth Arrow, sketch out how one political scientist thinks about Arrow’s theorem and its implications for voting rules. The basic claim is that Arrow’s theorem means that all real-world voting rules are problematic in two quite specific ways—namely, they can...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public choice 2019-04, Vol.179 (1/2), p.113-124
Main Author: Miller, Nicholas R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cycling
Democracy
Economics
Economics and Finance
Elections
Honor
Majority rule
Political behavior
Political majority
Political Science
Populism
Preferences
Public Finance
Ratings & rankings
Voting rules
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Summary:These reflections, written in honor of Kenneth Arrow, sketch out how one political scientist thinks about Arrow’s theorem and its implications for voting rules. The basic claim is that Arrow’s theorem means that all real-world voting rules are problematic in two quite specific ways—namely, they can be neither ‘strategyproof’ nor ‘spoilerproof’. However, Condorcet’s pairwise version of majority rule, while not a fully specified voting rule because of the cyclical majorities problem, is itself both strategyproof and spoilerproof. Moreover, the cycling problem seems to occur only rarely in practice.
ISSN:0048-5829
1573-7101
DOI:10.1007/s11127-018-0524-6