IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/53323.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Empirical social choice: An introduction

Author

Listed:
  • Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter

Abstract

The year 2012 was the 30th anniversary of William H. Riker’s modern classic Liberalism against populism (1982) and is marked by the present special issue. In this introduction, we seek to identify some core elements and evaluate the current status of the Rikerian research program and its empirical applications. Special attention is given to three phenomena and their possible empirical manifestations: The instability of social choice in the form of (1) the possibility of majority cycles, (2) the non-robustness of social choices given alternative voting methods, and (3) the possibility of various forms of manipulation of the decisions (heresthetics). These topics are then connected to the contributions to the current special issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2014. "Empirical social choice: An introduction," MPRA Paper 53323, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:53323
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53323/1/MPRA_paper_53323.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth Shepsle & Barry Weingast, 2012. "Why so much stability? Majority voting, legislative institutions, and Gordon Tullock," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 83-95, July.
    2. Dean Jamison, 1975. "The probability of intransitive majority rule," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 87-94, September.
    3. Mueller,Dennis C., 2003. "Public Choice III," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521894753, September.
    4. Plott, Charles R & Levine, Michael E, 1978. "A Model of Agenda Influence on Committee Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(1), pages 146-160, March.
    5. Maske, Kellie & Durden, Garey, 2003. "The Contributions and Impact of Professor William H. Riker," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 117(1-2), pages 191-220, October.
    6. DeMeyer, Frank & Plott, Charles R, 1970. "The Probability of a Cyclical Majority," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 38(2), pages 345-354, March.
    7. Stephen Wright & William Riker, 1989. "Plurality and runoff systems and numbers of candidates," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 155-175, February.
    8. Levine, Michael E. & Plott, Charles R., "undated". "Agenda Influence and Its Implications," Working Papers 151, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    9. Mackie,Gerry, 2003. "Democracy Defended," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521827089, September.
    10. Satterthwaite, Mark Allen, 1975. "Strategy-proofness and Arrow's conditions: Existence and correspondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 187-217, April.
    11. William Mitchell, 1988. "Virginia, Rochester, and Bloomington: Twenty-five years of public choice and political science," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 101-119, February.
    12. Mackie,Gerry, 2003. "Democracy Defended," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521534314, September.
    13. Norman Schofield, 1978. "Instability of Simple Dynamic Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 45(3), pages 575-594.
    14. William Riker, 1987. "The lessons of 1787," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 5-34, September.
    15. Jones, Bradford & Radcliff, Benjamin & Taber, Charles & Timpone, Richard, 1995. "Condorcet Winners and the Paradox of Voting: Probability Calculations for Weak Preference Orders," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(1), pages 137-144, March.
    16. Fishburn, Peter C., 1978. "Axioms for approval voting: Direct proof," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 180-185, October.
    17. James S. Dyer & Ralph F. Miles, 1976. "An Actual Application of Collective Choice Theory to the Selection of Trajectories for the Mariner Jupiter/Saturn 1977 Project," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 220-244, April.
    18. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
    19. Mitchell, William C, 1999. "Political Science and Public Choice: 1950-70," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 98(3-4), pages 237-249, March.
    20. Gehrlein, William V. & Fishburn, Peter C., 1976. "The probability of the paradox of voting: A computable solution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 14-25, August.
    21. William Riker, 1988. "The place of political science in public choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 247-257, June.
    22. van Deemen, Adrian M A & Vergunst, Noel P, 1998. "Empirical Evidence of Paradoxes of Voting in Dutch Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 475-490, December.
    23. Kenneth Shepsle & Barry Weingast, 1981. "Structure-induced equilibrium and legislative choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 503-519, January.
    24. William V. Gehrlein & Dominique Lepelley, 2011. "Voting Paradoxes and Group Coherence," Studies in Choice and Welfare, Springer, number 978-3-642-03107-6, June.
    25. McKelvey, Richard D., 1976. "Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and some implications for agenda control," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 472-482, June.
    26. Riker, William H., 1958. "The Paradox of Voting and Congressional Rules for Voting on Amendments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 349-366, June.
    27. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    28. Riker, William H., 1980. "Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(2), pages 432-446, June.
    29. Brams, Steven J. & Fishburn, Peter C., 1978. "Approval Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(3), pages 831-847, September.
    30. John Dobra & Gordon Tullock, 1981. "An approach to empirical measures of voting paradoxes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 193-194, January.
    31. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2011. "Election inversions, coalitions and proportional representation: Examples from Danish elections," MPRA Paper 35302, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maciel, Marcelo Veloso, 2024. "Was Bolsonaro’s 2018 electoral victory an institutional accident?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    2. Mehdi Feizi & Rasoul Ramezanian & Saeed Malek Sadati, 2020. "Borda paradox in the 2017 Iranian presidential election: empirical evidence from opinion polls," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 101-113, June.
    3. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2018. "Trump, Condorcet and Borda: Voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 29-35.
    4. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2016. "The cyclical social choice of primary vs. general election candidates: A note on the US 2016 presidential election," MPRA Paper 69171, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adrian Deemen, 2014. "On the empirical relevance of Condorcet’s paradox," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 311-330, March.
    2. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2001. "An Empirical Example of the Condorcet Paradox of Voting in a Large Electorate," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 135-145, April.
    3. Mostapha Diss & Eric Kamwa, 2020. "Simulations in Models of Preference Aggregation," Post-Print hal-02424936, HAL.
    4. Nicholas R. Miller, 2019. "Reflections on Arrow’s theorem and voting rules," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 113-124, April.
    5. Mostapha Diss & Eric Kamwa, 2019. "Simulations in Models of Preference Aggregation," Working Papers hal-02424936, HAL.
    6. Kenneth Koford, 1982. "Why so much stability? An optimistic view of the possibility of rational legislative decisionmaking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 3-19, March.
    7. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2018. "Trump, Condorcet and Borda: Voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 29-35.
    8. C.Y. Cyrus Chu & Meng-Yu Liang, 2022. "Why Are All Communist Countries Dictatorial?," IEAS Working Paper : academic research 22-A002, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
    9. John Dobra, 1983. "An approach to empirical studies of voting paradoxes: An update and extension," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 241-250, January.
    10. P. Hägg, 1997. "Theories on the Economics of Regulation: A Survey of the Literature from a European Perspective," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 337-370, December.
    11. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2018. "Public choice and political science: a view from Europe," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 245-257, June.
    12. Robert E. Goodin & Christian List, 2004. "Unique Virtues of Plurality Rule: Generalizing May's Theorem," Public Economics 0409010, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 22 Dec 2005.
    13. Marek M. Kaminski, 2015. "Empirical examples of voting paradoxes," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 20, pages 367-387, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Robi Ragan, 2015. "Computational social choice," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 5, pages 67-80, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. 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.
    16. Matthew D. Mitchell, 2019. "Uncontestable favoritism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 167-190, October.
    17. John W. Patty & Elizabeth Maggie Penn, 2019. "A defense of Arrow’s independence of irrelevant alternatives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 145-164, April.
    18. Randall Holcombe, 1989. "The median voter model in public choice theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 115-125, May.
    19. Herne, Kaisa, 1997. "Decoy alternatives in policy choices: Asymmetric domination and compromise effects," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 575-589, September.
    20. Itai Sened, 1991. "Contemporary Theory of Institutions in Perspective," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(4), pages 379-402, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social choice; Condorcet’s Paradox; voting theory; voting paradoxes; preferences; heresthetics.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B2 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925
    • B3 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • D69 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Other
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:53323. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.