Summary
Contents
Author Paul E. Johnson introduces researchers to the key questions, concepts, terminology, methods, and results of social choice theory, a method of aggregating individual's preferences into societal preferences (such as voting). By presenting technical details from the ground up, Johnson first introduces readers to the effects that decision-making procedures have on social choice. He next explains the idea of a social preference function, a rule that is used to take into account individuals, preferences when creating social ordering. He explores the basics and implications of Arrow's possibility theorem and the implications and applications of the uni-dimensional spatial model. Social Choice: Theory and Research concludes with an investigation of the multidimensional spatial model and an exploration of the instability of majority rule, including a discussion of chaos theory.
The Unidimensional Spatial Model
The Unidimensional Spatial Model
The spatial model of voting addresses, among other things, the conditions under which the majority rule voting cycles are limited to a top-cycle set or eliminated altogether. We consider (for the most part) binary agendas: voting procedures that compare two alternatives at a time. The ...