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On the Possibility of Faithfully Representative Committees

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  • Feld, Scott L.
  • Grofman, Bernard

Abstract

By faithful representation we mean the delegation of decision making to a relatively small committee that, using a weighted voting rule, will for each pair of alternatives make sincere choices identical to those that would be made by the society as a whole, and with the same vote margins. We show that for any society, no matter how large, faithful representation is possible by a committee with no more than m(m − 1)/2 members, where m is the number of alternatives. We also show that for any society, no matter how nonideological the bulk of its electorate, social preferences can be faithfully represented by a committee whose members all have singlepeaked or single-troughed preferences. Thus, all societies can be faithfully represented by a committee whose members see the world in unidimensional terms—that is, representatives can share a coherent ideological perspective even though the electorates they represent lack such a perspective. We further show that the usual mechanisms of proportional representation and the modified form of proportional representation recently proposed by Chamberlin and Courant (1983) do not guarantee faithful representation, and we discuss mechanisms that may provide faithful representation, even in a context in which new alternatives can arise.

Suggested Citation

  • Feld, Scott L. & Grofman, Bernard, 1986. "On the Possibility of Faithfully Representative Committees," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(3), pages 863-879, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:80:y:1986:i:03:p:863-879_18
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Hayrullah Dindar & Gilbert Laffond & Jean Laine, 2017. "The strong referendum paradox," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(4), pages 1707-1731, July.
    2. Scott L. Feld & Bernard Grofman, 1992. "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Cycle? Evidence from 36 Elections," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(2), pages 231-237, April.
    3. Michel Regenwetter & Elena Rykhlevskaia, 2007. "A general concept of scoring rules: general definitions, statistical inference, and empirical illustrations," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 29(2), pages 211-228, September.
    4. Daniel J. Smith, 2020. "Turn-taking in office," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 205-226, June.
    5. Scott Feld & Bernard Grofman, 1988. "The Borda count in n-dimensional issue space," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 167-176, November.
    6. Michel Regenwetter & James Adams & Bernard Grofman, 2002. "On the (Sample) Condorcet Efficiency of Majority Rule: An alternative view of majority cycles and social homogeneity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 153-186, September.

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