S

Social Choice Rights; Robbins, L; Samuelson, P; Single-

peaked preferences; Social choice; Social wel-
Amartya Sen fare function; Transitivity; Voting paradoxes;
Welfare economics

Abstract JEL Classifications

This article is a critical survey of the literature D71
of social choice theory, first formalized by
Kenneth Arrow in 1951. Social choice theory
Article
deals with the aggregation of some measure of
individual welfare into a collective measure. It
Social choice theory, pioneered in its modern form
takes different forms according both to what is
by Arrow (1951), is concerned with the relation
being aggregated (interests, judgements, and
between individuals and the society. In particular,
so on) and to the purpose of the aggregation.
it deals with the aggregation of individual inter-
The methodology of social choice has greatly
ests, or judgements, or well-beings, into some
clarified a range of hitherto obscure problems.
aggregate notion of social welfare, social judge-
ment or social choice. It should be obvious that the
aggregation exercise can take very different forms
Keywords
depending on exactly what is being aggregated
Impossibility theorem; Aggregation; Arrow,
(e.g., the personal interests of different people, or
K; Arrow’s theorem; Bentham, J; Bergson, A;
their moral or political judgements) and what is to
Black, D; Borda rule; Borda, J.-C; Chernoff
be derived on that basis (e.g., a measure of social
condition; Compensation tests; Condorcet,
welfare, or public decisions regarding what is to
Marquis de; Envy; Fairness; Independence of
be done or what outcomes are to be accepted). The
irrelevant alternatives; Interpersonal utility
formal similarities between these exercises in the
comparisons; Liberty; Majority rule; Maximin;
analytical format of aggregation should not make
Mill, J. S; Pareto principle; Positional rules;
us overlook the diversities in the nature of the
Primary goods; Rawls, J; Revealed preference;
exercises performed (see Sen 1977a, 1986). In
fact, the axioms chosen for different exercises
This chapter was originally published in The New are often quite divergent, and the general
Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, 2008.
Edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume

# The Author(s) 2008

Palgrave Macmillan (ed.), The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1856-2
2 Social Choice
conception of aggregation in social choice theory
permits such variation.
Welfare Economics and Social Choice
Although the origins of social choice theory – in
one form or another – can be traced back at least
two hundred years (Borda 1781; Condorcet 1785;
Bentham 1789), the formal theory of social choice
was initiated by Kenneth Arrow (1951) less than
four decades ago. Arrow drew on some existing
notions of welfare economics. One concept of a
social welfare function had been introduced by
Bergson (1938). This was defined in a very gen-
eral form indeed: as a real-value function W(.),
determining social welfare, ‘the value of which is
understood to depend on all the variables that
might be considered as affecting welfare’
(p. 417). Such a social welfare function – swf for
short – might be thought to be a real-valued func-
tion defined on X, the set of alternative social
states. It is a bit more permissive to see a Bergson
social welfare function as an ordering R of
X (more permissive because not all orderings
can be numerically represented).
Various uses to which a swf can be put in
welfare economics were investigated, particularly
by Samuelson (1947). His exercises made use of
several criteria that a swf may be required to
satisfy, including the Pareto criterion, demanding
that unanimous individual preference over any
pair of states should yield the corresponding
social preference over that pair.
None of the conditions that Samuelson
imposed on a swf for his exercises required any
general specification of how the social ordering
might change if different sets (strictly, n-tuples) of
individual orderings were considered. If any
n-tuple of individual preference orderings is
called a ‘profile’, then Samuelson’s exercises –
and those considered by Bergson – were all
‘single-profile’ problems, without additional
requirements of inter-profile consistency.
Arrow (1951) defined a social welfare
function – henceforth SWF (to be distinguished
from a Bergson–Samuelson swf ) – as a functional
relation specifying one social ordering R for any
given n-tuple of individual orderings (Ri), with
one ordering Ri for each person i: R = f (Ri)).
Note that if a Bergson–Samuelson swf is
defined as a social ordering R (rather than as a
real-valued function W(.)), then an Arrow SWF is
a function the value of which would be a
Bergson–Samuelson swf. Arrow’s exercise, in
this sense, is concerned with the way of arriving
at a Bergson–Samuelson swf.
Arrow proceeded to impose a few conditions
that any reasonable SWF could be expected to
satisfy. His ‘impossibility theorem’ (more for-
mally called ‘the General Possibility Theorem’)
shows that no SWF can satisfy all these conditions
together. One of the conditions deals specifically
with the multiple-profile characteristics of a SWF,
viz., the independence of irrelevant alternatives
(condition I). This requires that the chosen alter-
natives from any subset of social states must
remain unaltered as long as the individual prefer-
ences over this subset remain unaltered, even
though the individual preferences may have been
revised over other subsets. Another condition is a
weak version of the Pareto principle (condition P)
which requires that unanimous strict preference
over a pair must be reflected in the same strict
preference for the society. Another requirement is
that of unrestricted domain (condition U), which
demands that the domain of the SWF must include
all logically possible n-tuples of individual order-
ings, that is, the SWF should be able to specify a
social ordering R no matter what the individual
orderings happen to be. Finally, there is a condi-
tion of non-dictatorship (condition D), which
demands that there is no individual such that if
he or she prefers any x to any y, then x is socially
preferred to y, no matter what the other individuals
prefer.
One version of the ‘impossibility theorem’ of
Arrow establishes that, if the set of individuals is
finite and the number of distinct social states is at
least three, then there is no social welfare function
(SWF) satisfying conditions U, I, P, and D.
This result has been the starting point of much
of modern social choice theory. Even though the
focus has somewhat shifted in recent years from
impossibility results to other issues, there is no
question at all that Arrow’s formulation of the
social choice problem in presenting his
Social Choice
‘impossibility theorem’ laid the foundations of
social choice theory as it has evolved.
Two interpretational issues may be sorted out
first before formal social choice theory is consid-
ered for a general examination. The first issue
concerns the interpretation of ‘social preference’.
As has already been remarked, the nature of the
social choice exercise can vary in many different
ways, and one source of variation is the nature of
the end-point that is sought (in particular the inter-
pretation of R). Consider the relation of strict
social preference xPy. It can be given different
interpretations depending on the nature of the
exercise. For example, xPy can stand for the
judgement that society is better off in state x than
in state y. Such a judgement can be the view of a
particular individual (in his or her capacity as an
aggregating judge), or the mechanical outcome of
some institutional process of aggregating judge-
ments (e.g., the result of a voting procedure). Or,
alternatively, xPy can stand for the statement that,
in the choice exactly over the pair (x, y), x alone
must be chosen. A further alternative is to inter-
pret xPy as the requirement that y must not be
chosen from any set which contains x (whether
or not it contains any other alternative). These and
other interpretations give different views of
‘social preference’, and careful attention has to
be paid to the nature of the exercise depending
on the interpretation given. Although Arrow’s
‘impossibility theorem’ and similar results apply
to all the interpretations (and here there is a gen-
uine economy in the general axiomatic method),
extensive variations in the relevance of the results
to different types of problems must be recognized.
Second, a different source of variation relates
to the interpretation of the individual preference
orderings. The individual ordering can stand for
the ranking of personal well-being, and if so, the
exercise is one of well-being aggregation. An
example may be found in arriving at overall
judgements of the well-being of the community
based on rankings of individual well-beings. To
take a very different type of example, in making a
committee decision, the different judgements of
the members of the committee may be aggregated
together in an overall judgement or an overall
decision, and that exercise is one of judgement
3
aggregation. This is not to deny that the judge-
ments of members of the committee may, in fact,
be influenced by their individual interests, but the
nature of the exercise is primarily that of aggre-
gating the possibly divergent judgements of the
members of a committee to arrive at an over-all
committee view. In some other exercises, for
example, in electing a candidate or a member of
Parliament or a Mayor, the individual votes may
well reflect a clear-cut mixture of individual inter-
ests and political beliefs, so that the exercise may
have features of interest aggregation as well as
judgement aggregation. Once again, it is worth
emphasizing that while the formal results such as
Arrow’s ‘impossibility theorem’ apply to each of
the interpretations, the exact substantive content
of the result would depend on the particular inter-
pretation chosen.
The specific context of Arrow’s exercise was
that of supplementing the work of Bergson and
Samuelson in deriving social welfare functions for
welfare-economic studies. If the individual order-
ings are interpreted as utility rankings of individ-
uals, and social preferences interpreted as a
judgement of social welfare, the Arrow theorem
asserted that there is no way of combining indi-
vidual utility orderings into an overall social wel-
fare judgement satisfying the four specified
conditions. The result can be easily translated
into a choice-theoretic framework by adopting a
choice-based notion of ‘social preference’, e.g.,
the ‘base’ relation or the ‘revealed preference’
relation of social choice. On this interpretation, it
would appear that there is no way of arriving at a
social choice procedure specifying what is to be
chosen (over pairs, or over larger subsets), satis-
fying the appropriately interpreted (i.e., in terms
of choice) conditions specified by Arrow (see
Blair et al. 1976; and Sen 1977a, 1982).
This is, of course, a negative result. A great
deal of social choice theory, at least in the early
stage, consisted of trying to deal with this result,
suggesting different interpretations, different
extensions, different ways of ‘resolution’, and
other responses to the ‘impossibility’ identified
by Arrow.
The main lines of response to Arrow’s result
will be examined presently. It is, however, worth
4 Social Choice
emphasizing that the ‘impossibility theorem’ must
not be seen as primarily a ‘negative’ achievement.
The axiomatic method, as used here, can take a set
of axioms which look reasonable enough and then
derive some joint implications of these axioms. If
the implications are unacceptable, the axioms can
be reexamined. Interpreted thus, the axiomatic
method is a procedure for assessing a set of prin-
ciples reflected in the axiom structure, and it per-
sistently invites attention to the content and
acceptability of the axioms chosen.
Arrow’s impossibility result brought out the
unviability of the welfare-economic structure
that had emerged in the discussion preceding the
birth of modern social choice theory. After the
rejection of ‘interpersonal comparisons’ of well-
being (on this see Robbins 1932, 1938), it was
increasingly accepted that social choices or social
judgements would have to be based on individual
utility orderings without interpersonal compari-
sons. The four axioms chosen by Arrow make a
good deal of sense in that context, and had indeed
been used – formally or informally – in the pre-
existing literature. What Arrow’s theorem demon-
strates is the unviability of that structure. The
primary impact of Arrow’s initial result was to
demand that the entire question of the basis of
social welfare judgement be re-examined. While
this is, in one sense, a negative result, in another
sense it opened up various ways of reformulating
the social choice problem as a result of the dem-
onstrated unviability of the pre-existing approach.
The later literature in social choice theory bears
testimony to the fact that many of these ways have
been found to be both feasible and useful. Several
of these approaches will be examined later on in
this note, but the positive contribution of the neg-
ative impossibility result presented by Arrow has
to be kept in view to see these advances in their
appropriate perspective.
Variations and Extensions of Arrow’s
Impossibility Result
The literature of social choice theory contains a
large number of theorems that take the form of
presenting variations of the type of impossibility
identified by Arrow. In fact, Arrow himself has
presented several distinct versions. The one
presented in 1951 contained a formulational
error, which was identified and corrected by
Blau (1957). A later version, which was the one
cited in the last section, is presented in Arrow
(1963). Various other variations can be found in
the literature, modifying one condition or another,
and presenting impossibility results based on con-
ditions that are more demanding in some respects
and less demanding in others (see particularly
Blau 1957; Murakami 1968; Pattanaik 1971;
Fishburn 1973, 1974; Hansson 1976; Brams
1976; Plott 1976; Kelly 1978; Monjardet 1979;
Roberts 1980b; Chichilnisky 1982; McManus
1982; Suzumura 1983; Hurley 1985; Nitzan and
Paroush 1985, among many others). Each of
Arrow’s conditions has been modified in one
way or another in these different variants.
One particular variation, which is both illumi-
nating and simple, relates to results presented by
Wilson (1972) and Binmore (1976). This shows
that given unrestricted domain and independence,
all permissible social welfare functions will either
have social rankings ‘imposed’ irrespective of
individual preferences, or have a dictator, or
have a ‘reverse dictator’ (a person such that when-
ever he prefers x to y, society prefers y to x).
Arrow’s impossibility theorem can be seen as a
corollary of this when the Pareto principle is also
demanded, since Pareto will eliminate both
‘imposition’ and ‘reverse dictatorship’, leaving
dictatorship as the only remaining possibility.
One line of variation that has been very exten-
sively investigated is that of weakening the
demand of ‘collective rationality’, i.e., relaxing
the requirement that social choice must be based
on a social ordering (complete, reflexive and tran-
sitive). The ‘range’ of the social welfare function
is supposed to include only social orderings, and
the proposed relaxation weakens that demand. It
can be shown that if the transitivity of only strict
social preference is demanded (without also
demanding the transitivity of social indifference),
then all of Arrow’s conditions can be simulta-
neously satisfied and there is no impossibility
(see Sen 1969, 1970; see also Schick 1969).
This condition of transitivity of strict prefer-
ence, formally called ‘quasitransitivity’, when
imposed on social preferences, for a social welfare
Social Choice
function satisfying unrestricted domain, indepen-
dence and the Pareto principle, has the effect of
confining social choice procedures to ‘oligar-
chies’ (this result was first presented in an
unpublished paper by Gibbard, and reported in
Sen 1970). An oligarchic group consists of a set
of individuals such that if any one of them prefers
any x to any y, then x must be taken to be socially
preferred to or indifferent to y, and if all the indi-
viduals in that group unanimously prefer x to y,
then x must be taken to be socially strictly pre-
ferred to y. One extreme case of oligarchy is that of
a one-person oligarchy, which corresponds to
Arrow’s dictatorship. The other extreme makes
the oligarchy group include every individual in
the community. In this latter case, the fact that all
of them taken together happen to be decisive is not
remarkable (it follows in fact immediately from
the Pareto principle). But it also gives every mem-
ber of the community ‘veto’ power in the sense
that whenever anyone prefers any x to any y, this
precludes the possibility of y being socially
strictly preferred to x, and this has the effect of
producing lots of social indifferences all around
(see Sen 1969).
This ‘veto’ result can be obtained even without
demanding quasi-transitivity of social preference,
by supplementing the weaker demand of
‘acyclicity’ (i.e. the absence of strict preference
cycles) with some other conditions, as has been
investigated by Mas-Colell and Sonnenschein
1972; Schwartz 1972, 1986; Guha 1972; Brown
1974, 1975; Blau 1976; Blau and Deb 1977;
Monjardet 1979, and others. Partial ‘veto’ results
have been established with still weaker conditions
(see Blair and Pollak 1982; Kelsey 1984).
On a somewhat different line of investigation,
it has been possible to somewhat weaken the
condition of full transitivity of social preference
and still retain exactly the impossibility identified
by Arrow, i.e., dictatorship following from
conditions U, I and P. This is easily done by
replacing the requirement of ordering by that of
having ‘semi-orders’, but it can be relaxed further
(see Blair and Pollak 1979; Blau 1979).
These investigations of relaxation of collective
rationality have not been confined only to the
weakening of transitivity of social preference. It
5
is possible to drop the requirement of complete-
ness of social preference, permitting the possibil-
ity that many pairs of states x and y may be not
socially rankable vis-à-vis each other, and still the
impossibility result may survive if the Arrow con-
ditions are correspondingly redefined to cover this
case with sufficient richness of social ranking, in
line with Arrow’s original motivation (see
Barthelemy 1983; Weymark 1983).
Yet another line of investigation consists of
relaxing the requirement that social choice must
be ‘binary’ in nature, in the sense of the choice
function being representable by a binary relation
(whether or not that binary relation R is called
social preference). Some positive possibility
results were obtained by Schwartz (1970, 1972),
Fishburn (1973), Plott (1973), Bordes (1976), and
Campbell (1976), by demanding consistency con-
ditions on choice functions that are weaker than
the requirement of binary choice.
One way of doing this is to convert preference
cycles into indifference classes. For example, take
the case of the so-called ‘paradox of voting’ in
which person 1 prefers x to y, and y to z, person
2 prefers y to z, and z to x, and person 3 prefers z to
x, and x to y. In this case the majority rule yields
x being socially preferred to y, y being socially
preferred to z, and z being socially preferred to x,
producing a strict preference cycle, with no alter-
native that is not beaten by another alternative. If,
in this case, all the three alternatives are declared
socially indifferent, by converting the cycle into
an indifference class, then much of Arrow’s
requirements can be retained. However, one type
of consistency will certainly be violated by this
formulation of social choice, to wit, relating social
choice over the pair (x, y) to that over the triple (x,
y, z). Due to the majority preference for x over y,
and the demand of the ‘independence’ condition
(I) that individual preferences only over (x, y) be
considered when choosing over this pair only,
x must be chosen and y rejected in the choice
over the pair (x, y). But in the choice over the
triple (x, y, z), even state y can be selected as a
member of the indifference class, when the major-
ity cycle is converted into indifference. The
choosability of y from the larger set (x, y, z), and
its non-choosability from the smaller set (x, y)
6 Social Choice
contained in the larger set, does violate a standard
condition of consistency of choice, variously
called Property a or the ‘Chernoff condition’, or
standard ‘contraction consistency’. In the absence
of this consistency, the choice function cannot
possibly be represented in a binary form, i.e.,
through a binary relation R such that the choices
correspond to the R-maximal elements (with
R being derived from the internal properties of
choice, e.g., xRy when x is chosen in the presence
of y). But this condition (Property a) is, in fact,
much weaker than the requirement that the choice
function be binary.
Since binariness may not in itself be a compel-
ling requirement, the plausibility of this line of
resolution of Arrow’s impossibility depends on
the value of the consistency conditions that these
‘solutions’ may actually satisfy. By imposing
some relatively appealing consistency conditions,
it can be shown that the dictatorship result of
Arrow, and the other related results regarding
oligarchy, veto power, etc., derived in the binary
framework can reappear easily enough in non-
binary choice as well (see Blair et al. 1976; Sen
1977a). It can also be pointed out that even when
the social choice procedures do not satisfy
binariness in the sense of being representable by
a binary relation, there would, of course, be binary
relations that are generated by the choice func-
tion. For example, the ‘revealed preference’ rela-
tion (xRy if x is chosen in the presence of y) will be
defined by any choice function, since the choice of
any alternative (say, x) from any set containing
another alternative (say, y), will yield the deduc-
tion xRy. The issue of binariness arises when it is
further demanded that is what is chosen from each
subset consists exactly of the R-maximal elements
of that set, according to that binary relation R. It
can be shown that binariness in this form demands
much the same thing whether we concentrate on
the ‘revealed preference’ relation, or the ‘base
relation’ (the latter being defined as: xRy if and
only if x is chosen specifically from the pair x, y).
Binariness according to the ‘revealed preference’
relation is equivalent to that according to the
‘base’ relation (see Herzberger 1973).
Although the demands of binariness provide
one way of re-establishing Arrow’s
‘impossibility’ results, a different way is not to
demand binariness at all, but to translate all of
Arrow’s demands to one specific binary relation
generated by social choice, e.g., the ‘revealed
preference’, or the ‘base’ relation. The Arrow
theorem will hold exactly in the same way for
each such interpretation of R, provided the
Arrow conditions are correspondingly
reinterpreted. In this sense binariness is not a
central issue in the inescapability of the ‘impossi-
bility’ result of Arrow (on this see Sen 1977a,
1982; on related matters, see Grether and Plott
1982; Suzumura 1983; and Matsumoto 1985).
One general conclusion that seems to emerge
from these investigations of relaxation of ‘collec-
tive rationality’ properties is the durability and
robustness of Arrow’s ‘impossibility’ result. The
tension between different types of principles
seems to survive various ways of relaxing these
principles, and the particular ‘impossibility theo-
rem’ of Arrow is a centre piece of a much broader
picture. Demands on consistency of social choice
can be dramatically changed without the ‘impos-
sibility’ features disappearing.
Domain Restrictions
When presenting his impossibility result, Arrow
had suggested the possibility that a resolution
might be found in terms of restricting the domain
of the social welfare function (no longer requiring
that it works no matter what the individual prefer-
ences happen to be). It is, of course, clear that
there are many preference combinations for
which such procedures as the method of majority
decision will yield perfectly consistent social
choice. Arrow (1951) himself had explored a par-
ticular type of restriction of individual preferences
called ‘single-peaked preferences’ (earlier
discussed by Black 1948). This corresponds to
the case in which the alternatives can be so
arranged on a line that everyone’s intensity of
preference has one peak only, i.e., the preference
drops monotonically as we move from left to
right, or rises monotonically, or it rises to a peak
and then falls. Arrow showed that if individual
preferences are single-peaked and the number of
voters is odd, then majority decision will yield
transitive social preference.
Social Choice
The positive possibility result for single-
peaked preferences can be generalized in many
different ways. It can be shown that individual
preferences being single-peaked in every triple
of alternatives is equivalent to the condition that
in every triple there is one state such that no one
regards it to be ‘worst’. It can be shown that a
similar agreement on some alternative being
regarded as not ‘best’ would do, and so would
an agreement on some alternative being not
‘medium’. Altogether, this sufficiency condition
is called ‘value restriction’, and the particular type
of agreement (whether ‘not best’, or ‘not worst’,
or ‘not medium’) may vary from triple to triple
(see Sen 1966). Also the requirement of oddness
of the number of voters can be eliminated if the
demand is not for full transitivity of social prefer-
ence, but only the absence of preference cycles
and the existence of a majority winner (Sen 1969).
In this general line of investigation, necessary and
sufficient conditions for transitivity as well as
acyclicity of majority decisions (i.e., for the exis-
tence of a majority winner) have been identified
by Inada (1969, 1970) and Sen and Pattanaik
(1969). The former requirement is called
‘extremal restriction’. The relationships among
these and other related conditions are discussed
in Inada (1969), Sen (1970), Pattanaik (1971),
Fishburn (1973), Salles (1976), Slutsky (1977),
Kelly (1978), Monjardet (1979), Blair and Muller
(1983), Larsson (1983), Suzumura (1983),
Dummett (1984), Arrow and Raynaud (1986),
Jain (1986) among many others.
On a different line of analysis, domain condi-
tions can be specified not only in terms of general
qualitative correspondence of individual prefer-
ences, but also in terms of number-specific
requirements on the distribution of voters over
the different preferences (see particularly Plott
1967; Tullock 1967, 1969; Saposnik 1975;
Slutsky 1977; Gaertner and Heinecke 1978;
Grandmont 1978; Dummett 1984).
These domain conditions all deal specifically
with the method of majority decision, but the
problem can be investigated more generally.
Domain conditions for other voting rules have
been investigated (see, for example, Pattanaik
1971). More recently, the necessary and sufficient
7
domain conditions for the existence of any social
welfare function satisfying all of Arrow’s other
conditions (whether or not based on counting
majority) have been investigated (see Kalai and
Muller 1977, and Maskin 1976; see also Dasgupta
et al. 1979; Kalai and Ritz 1980, and Chichilnisky
and Heal 1983).
These domain restrictions are indeed very
demanding, and counterexamples can be found
without any loss of plausibility in terms of real-
life situations (see particularly Kramer 1973). But
if these restrictions are not fulfilled, then there is
no general ‘solution’ to be found in opting for the
majority rule, or some other rule like that. Indeed,
it can be shown for the majority rule that the
cycles that may be generated may well be
extremely extensive, yielding ‘total cycles’
involving all social states (see Schofield 1978;
McKelvey 1979). This line of investigation too,
like the one on collective rationality (discussed in
the last section), yields rather discouraging
results. No general solution of impossibility theo-
rems of the type presented by Arrow can be easily
found by opting for a rule like the majority deci-
sion, hoping that the domain conditions will be
somehow satisfied.
In many economic decisions, it is quite
straightforward to see that these conditions will
indeed be all violated. However, when the number
of alternatives happen to be small, and when there
is complex balancing of conflicting consider-
ations, as in many political contexts (elections,
committee decisions over rival proposals, etc.),
there might possibly be some room for optimism.
If cycles or other types of intransitivities turn out
to be rather rare in these cases, then the approach
of domain restriction may well offer some help. In
contrast, in welfare- economic problems, that
hope is very limited.
Indeed, if we take such a simple social-welfare
problem as the division of a given cake between
three or more individuals, with each person voting
according to his or her own share of the cake, it
can be easily shown that there will indeed be
majority cycles. But it is worth noting in this
context that the method of majority decision is
not particularly appropriate for such economic
problems anyway. Any distribution of the given
8 Social Choice
cake can be improved by choosing one of the
persons (even the poorest one) and dividing a
part of his or her share for the benefit of all others,
thereby producing an ‘improvement’ according to
the majority rule. Indeed, we can go on ‘improv-
ing’ the distribution in this way, following the
majority ranking procedure, making the worst-
off individual more and more worse off all the
time. As a criterion for welfare-economic judge-
ment, majority rule is, in fact, a non-starter. The
recognition of this fact makes it less tragic that
majority cycles will tend to arise easily enough in
many economic problems involving distributional
variations. The majority rule would not have
offered any ‘real solution’ to the task of making
social welfare judgements in this type of eco-
nomic problems even if it had been fully consis-
tent. It is more in the context of political decisions
involving a few diverse alternatives (rather than
welfare-economic judgements in general) that
majority rule and related decision procedures
have some prima facie plausibility. It is, thus, of
some interest that it is in the context of these
problems that the domain conditions investigated
by the social choice literature are of direct rele-
vance and offer some hope.
Manipulability and Implementation
A different type of problem for voting procedures
arises from the possibility of ‘manipulation’ of the
decision mechanism by the voters voting ‘dishon-
estly’. A voting procedure is ‘manipulable’ when
it is in the interest of some voter for some set of
individual preferences to vote differently from his
or her sincere preference.
The ubiquity of the possibility of manipulation
had been conjectured for a long time, but it was
established only recently in a remarkable theorem
first presented by Gibbard (1973), and then by
Satterthwaite (1975). A similar result, and a
pointer to positive possibility if the conditions
are relaxed, was presented by Pattanaik (1973).
The Gibbard–Satterthwaite manipulation theorem
establishes that every nondictatorial voting
scheme with at least three distinct outcomes
must be manipulable.
Gibbard established this theorem as a corollary
of another one dealing with ‘game forms’ in
general, of which voting schemes happen to be
special cases. A game form does not restrict the
strategies to be chosen by the individuals to the
orderings of social states (i.e., to ‘ballots’), and
each person’s strategy set can be any set of sig-
nals. Gibbard established that no non-dictatorial
game form with at least three possible outcomes
can be ‘straightforward’ (a concept first used by
Farquharson 1956), in the sense that each person
would have a dominant strategy (i.e., a best strat-
egy with respect to his ordering of the outcomes,
irrespective of what the strategies of others might
be). Thus for every non-dictatorial game form of
this type, there is at least one person who does not
have a dominant strategy for some preference
ordering of outcomes. From this the manipulabil-
ity theorem follows immediately. If a voting
scheme were non-manipulable, then everyone
would have had a dominant strategy, viz., record-
ing his or her true preference irrespective of what
others do. Since the existence of dominant strate-
gies is disestablished, so is the existence of honest
dominant strategies.
Various variations of this discouraging result
and some avenues of escape have been investi-
gated in the literature, which is quite vast (but
excellent discussions can be found in Barbera
1977; Pattanaik 1978; Laffont 1979; Peleg 1984;
Brams and Fishburn 1983; Moulin 1983; and Jain
1986).
The focus on ‘honest’ revelation of preferences
has gradually given way to discussions of equi-
librium and of implementation (for an early
pointer in this direction, see Dummett and
Farquharson 1961). If the object of the exercise
is effectiveness in the sense of getting an appro-
priate outcome (rather than seeking honesty as
such), then the thing to investigate is indeed the
existence of an effective mechanism rather than a ‘
strategy-proof’ one. If, for example, a non-
strategy-proof mechanism yields an equilibrium
of dishonest behaviour that produces the same
outcome as honest revelation of preferences
would, then that mechanism could well be
regarded as successful in terms of effectiveness.
The shift in attention towards equilibrium and
implementation has opened up new lines of inves-
tigation, which are being explored (see
Social Choice
particularly Dutta and Pattanaik 1978; Dasgupta
et al. 1979; Sengupta and Dutta 1979; Peleg 1984;
Moulin 1983). The implementation literature also
links up with more standard problems of public
economics, in which it has received attention in a
somewhat different but related form (see, particu-
larly, Groves and Ledyard 1977; Green and
Laffont 1979; Laffont 1979).
Information: Utility, Compensations and
Fairness
The alleged impossibility of interpersonal com-
parisons of utility was entirely accepted in the
early works on social choice theory. Arrow’s
(1951) format gave no room to interpersonally
comparable utility information, and indeed took
utility information in the form of non-comparable
ordinal utility rankings. This was entirely in line
with the dominant position of welfare economics
at that time. Even though there were formats for
interpersonal comparisons of utility suggested in
some contributions to welfare economics (see
particularly Vickrey 1945, and Harsanyi 1955),
these suggestions were not followed up in the
formal social-choice-theoretic literature until
much later.
There had been earlier attempts to by-pass the
need for utility comparisons by using the notion of
compensation tests (e.g., whether the gainers
could compensate the losers), and this had led to
the identification of problems of internal consis-
tency as well as of cogency (see Kaldor 1939;
Hicks 1939; Scitovsky 1941; Little 1950;
Samuelson 1950; Baumol 1952; Gorman 1953;
der Graaff 1957). The problem of cogency is
perhaps deeper, in some ways, than that of con-
sistency. To make sure that gainers have gained so
much that they can compensate the loser does, of
course, have some immediate plausibility as a
requirement. However, the relevance of the com-
pensation tests suffers from the following limita-
tion. If compensations are not paid, then it is not
clear in what way the situation can be taken to be
an improvement (since those who have lost may
well be a great deal poorer, needier or more
deserving – whatever our criteria for such judg-
ments might be – than the gainers). And if com-
pensations are in fact paid, then after the
9
compensation what we observe is a Pareto
improvement, so that no compensation tests are
in fact needed. Thus, the compensation approach
suffers from having to face a choice between
being unconvincing or being irrelevant.
Another approach that by-passes the need for
interpersonal comparisons proper is that of ‘fair-
ness’, presented first by Foley (1967). Here a
person’s advantage is judged by comparing his
bundle of goods with those enjoyed by others,
and a situation is called ‘equitable’ if no individ-
ual prefers the bundle of goods enjoyed by
another person to his own. If an allocation is
both Pareto optimal and equitable then it is called
‘fair’. (There is some non-uniformity of language
in the literature, and sometimes the term ‘fair’ has
been defined simply as ‘equitable’, e.g., in
Feldman and Kirman 1974 and Pazner and
Schmeidler 1974.) This approach has been pur-
sued by a number of authors (such as Kolm 1969;
Schmeidler and Vind 1972; Varian 1974, 1975;
Goldman and Sussangkarn 1978; Archibald and
Donaldson 1979; Crawford 1979; Crawford and
Heller 1979; Svensson 1980; Champsaur and
Laroque 1982; Suzumura 1983, and others).
There are interesting problems of the existence
of fair allocations and of the consistency of fair-
ness with other principles.
It should be noted that the comparisons
involved in the calculus of ‘fairness’ are not inter-
personal ones, but in fact comparisons of different
positions that the same individual might occupy
(e.g., having commodity bundles), as it is evalu-
ated by the given person. The criterion of ‘non-
envy’ does clearly have some appeal, even though
it can be argued, that our deprivations may be
related not only to other people’s commodity bun-
dles but also to non-commodity features of their
advantage. For example, a person with a disability
may well prefer to be in somebody else’s position
without that disability, but that is not the same
thing as envying that other person’s commodity
bundle. As such, it could be argued, that the infor-
mational base of the fairness calculus is funda-
mentally limited.
Another difference between the ‘fairness’
approach and the standard social-choice-theoretic
procedures relates to the more limited aim of the
10
former. As Varian (1974) puts it, the fairness cri-
terion in fact limits itself to answering the question
as to whether there is a ‘good’ allocation
(pp. 64–5). It is certainly true that social choice
theory has been abundantly more ambitious, per-
haps unrealistically so. On the other hand, it can
be argued, that even the features of ‘goodness’
identified by the approach of fairness (e.g., equi-
tability with efficiency) may often fail to be satis-
fied by any feasible allocation at all, so that the
question of ranking the ‘non-good’ allocations is
not really avoidable. In addition, it can be argued
that insofar as the foundation of the ‘fairness’
approach is based only on comparing the com-
modity bundles of different persons without going
further into the relative advantages enjoyed by the
persons (taking everything into account), the cri-
terion of ‘goodness’ used in the ‘fairness’ litera-
ture is itself rather a limited one. It is perhaps for
these reasons that the use of interpersonal com-
parisons of well-being in social choice theory
(in the literature on social welfare functionals, to
be discussed presently) has tended to aim at going
a great deal further than the ‘fairness’ literature
was programmed to achieve.
Social Welfare Functionals and Interpersonal
Comparisons
The empirical problem of obtaining information
on interpersonal comparisons of utility has to be
distinguished from the formal problem of accom-
modating such information within the structure of
social choice theory. The format of social welfare
functions used by Arrow, and the related formats
of collected choice rules (involving such various
forms as social decision functions, social choice
functions, etc.), make no provision for any utility
information finer than that of non-comparable
individual orderings. One way of extending that
framework is to permit the use of more utility
information, through what have been called
‘social welfare functionals’ (SWFL): R = F
({Ui}). For each set (strictly, n-tuple) of utility
functions Ui,. . ., Un (one function per person),
the social welfare functional F determines exactly
one social ordering R. However, since utility func-
tions can be nominally varied through alternative
presentations without involving any ‘real’ change
Social Choice
(e.g., doubling all the utility numbers), any social
welfare functional has to be combined with some
‘invariance’ requirement. If two utility n-tubles
(Ui) and (U*i ) are judged to be informationally
equivalent, differing from each other only

in rep-
resentation, then FðfUi gÞ ¼ F Ui . The
assumed structure of measurability and interper-
sonal comparability of utilities can be incorpo-
rated through specifying these invariance
requirements (see Sen 1970, 1977b; d’Aspremont
and Gevers 1977; Roberts 1980a; Blackorby
et al. 1984).
Arrow’s social welfare function is a special
case of a social welfare functional with the invari-
ance requirement corresponding to ordinal non-
comparability (i.e., if one n-tuple of utility func-
tions is replaced by another obtained from the first
by taking positive, monotonic transformations of
each utility function – not necessarily the same for
all – then the social ordering R determined by the
first n-tuple will also be yielded by the second). It
is obvious that Arrow’s ‘impossibility theorem’
can be translated in the format of social welfare
functionals with ordinal non-comparability. More
interestingly, this result can be generalized to the
case of cardinal non-comparability also. When
individual utilities can be cardinally measured
but not in any way interpersonally compared, the
same impossibility result continues to hold (see
Sen 1970). On the other hand, introducing inter-
personal comparability without cardinality (i.e.,
using ordinal comparability only) does resolve
the Arrow dilemma, and various possible
SWFLs exist fulfilling all of Arrow’s conditions
in this case. An example is provided by Rawls’s
maximin rule (or the lexicographic version of it),
defining these exercises in terms of utility com-
parison, rather than that of indices of ‘primary
goods’, as in Rawls’s own framework.
Richer utility information can be systemati-
cally used to admit various social choice proce-
dures not admissible in Arrow’s framework. The
use of various axioms to characterize particular
rules utilizing richer utility information can be
found in an influential and important contribution
by Suppes (1966). In the recent years the more
formal frameworks of social choice theory
(in particular, that of SWFLs) have been
Social Choice
extensively used to derive axiomatically a number
of standard aggregation procedures, such as the
Rawlsian lexicographic maximin, utilitarianism,
and some others (see particularly Hammond
1976, 1977, 1979; Strasnick 1976; d’Aspremont
and Gevers 1977; Arrow 1977; Sen 1977b;
Deschamps and Gevers 1978; 1979; Maskin
1978; Gevers 1979; Roberts 1980a; Blackorby
et al. 1984; d’Aspremont 1985). While these
results are formal and do not address the question
of the empirical content of interpersonal compar-
isons of utility (though this too is discussed by
Hammond 1977), the axiom structures have been
related to various empirical insights thrown up by
the substantive literature on interpersonal
comparisons.
One format that has also been investigated
relates to the intermediate possibility of making
partial interpersonal comparisons of utilities. Var-
ious formal structures of partial comparability and
partial cardinality have, in fact, been investigated
in the social-choice-theoretic literature (see Sen
1970; Blackorby 1975; Fine 1975; Basu 1979;
Bezembinder and van Acker 1979). This is a less
ambitious approach, admitting that not all types of
interpersonal comparisons may be possible, and
such comparability may be at best partial, with
many undecided cases. Nevertheless some defi-
nite results can be obtained even on the basis of
the incomplete structures.
Various other informational frameworks
involving richer utility data can be and have
been investigated, and some of them lend them-
selves to fruitful social-choice-theoretic use. One
of the structures that need further investigation is
the problem of combining n-tuples of ‘extended
orderings’ reflecting each person’s interpersonal
comparisons. These are ordinal structures, but
instead of there being one interpersonal compari-
son covering all the individuals in the different
possible positions, this starts with the set of inter-
personal comparisons made by different individ-
uals (one ‘extended ordering’ per person), and
addresses the problem of aggregation in that
framework. Some interesting results in this area
have been obtained (see Hammond 1976; Kelly
1978; Suzumura 1983; Gaertner 1983). The task,
however, is rather a difficult one, since the
11
information to marshall is extremely extensive,
and progress in this area has tended to be rather
slow. On the other hand, since social choice theory
has to be concerned with the problem of combin-
ing different persons’ possibly divergent views,
that ‘extended’ problem certainly has a good deal
of relevance and potential importance.
Liberty and Rights
The informational limitations of the early social-
choice-theoretic structures have led to responses
in the later literature not only in the form of
enriching the utility information (by the use of
such structures as social welfare functionals,
SWFL), but also that of making more systematic
use of non-utility information. One of the areas
that has been investigated in this context is that of
rights in general and of liberty in particular. Lib-
erty can be an important consideration in matters
of social choice, but it cannot be adequately cap-
tured in terms of utility information, however rich
it might be. If it is asserted that a person should be
free to do what he or she likes in certain purely
personal matters, that assertion is based on the
non-utility characteristics of the ‘personal nature’
of these choices, and not primarily on utility con-
siderations. As John Stuart Mill (1859) had
argued, even if others might be offended by some-
one’s personal behaviour in such matters as reli-
gious practice, it would not be appropriate to
count the disutility of the offended in the same
way as the utility of the person whose freedom of
religious practice is under consideration. Various
notions of ‘protected spheres’, ‘personal
domains’, etc., have been formalized in the social-
choice-theoretic literature in specifying domains
of personal liberty.
One of the results obtained in this field that has
led to a great deal of controversy concerns the
conflict between the Pareto principle and certain
minimal conditions of liberty when imposed on a
social choice framework with unrestricted (or a
fairly wide) domain. The ‘impossibility of the
Paretian liberal’, presented in Sen (1970), has
led to a variety of responses, including extensions,
disputations, and suggestions of different ways of
‘resolving’ the conflict (see Ng 1971; Batra and
Pattanaik 1972; Gibbard 1974; Blau 1975; Seidl
12
1975; Campbell 1976; Kelly 1976, 1978; Aldrich
1977; Breyer 1977; Ferejohn 1978; Karni 1978;
Suzumura 1978, 1983; Mueller 1979; Barnes
1980; Bernholz 1980; Breyer and Gardner 1980;
Breyer and Gigliotti 1980; Fountain 1980;
Gardner 1980; McLean 1980; Weale 1980;
Baigent 1981; Gaertner and Krüger 1981;
Gärdenfors, 1981; Hammond 1981; Schwartz
1970, 1972, 1986; Sugden 1981, 1985; Austen-
Smith 1982; Levi 1982; Krüger and Gaertner
1983; Basu 1984; Kelsey 1985; Wriglesworth
1985; Coughlin 1986; Elster and Hylland 1986;
Gaertner 1986; Riley 1986; Webster 1986, among
others). The literature is vast, and covers issues of
political compatibility, moral cogency and strate-
gic consistency; it has been critically surveyed
and assessed by Suzumura (1983) and
Wriglesworth (1985). Various alternative formu-
lations of liberty, in terms of social judgments,
social decisions and social institutions can be
shown to yield corresponding impossibility
results (see Sen 1983).
It is not really surprising that conditions of
liberty or rights which make essential use of
non-utility information may clash with exclu-
sively utility-based principles, such as the Pareto
principle. Non-utility considerations cannot be
immovable objects if utility considerations, even
in a rather limited context (as in the Pareto prin-
ciple), are made into an irresistable force. One role
of this type of impossibility result lies in pointing
to the possibility that utility data may not be
informationally adequate for social judgement or
social choice, even when the utility information
comes in the most articulate and complete form.
Other lessons have also been suggested, and each
interpretation has also been substantively
disputed.
While impossibility results like this have
received good deal of attention, relatively little
effort has so far been spent on investigating the
positive implications of various theories of rights,
liberties and freedom, in the general area of social
choice. The need for caution in formulating the
demands of liberty because of problems of inter-
nal consistency has in fact been investigated. But
the more general question of developing a fruitful
and positive theory of rights and liberty within the
Social Choice
general structure of social choice theory has not
yet been much investigated.
Independence and Neutrality
The independence of irrelevant alternatives, used
by Arrow, plays a major part in the social choice
formats in the Arrovian tradition. It is also crucial
for Arrow’s impossibility theorem. The nature,
implications and acceptability of the indepen-
dence condition have been subjected to a good
deal of critical examination in the literature (see
particularly Gärdenfors, 1973; Hansson 1973;
Ray 1973; Fine and Fine 1974; Fishburn 1974;
Mayston 1974; Young 1974a, b; Binmore 1976;
Kelly 1978; Pattanaik 1978; Moulin 1983;
Suzumura 1983; Peleg 1984; Hurley 1985;
Schwartz 1986).
One of the objections that was originally raised
about the relevance of Arrow’s impossibility the-
orem related to the acceptability of the indepen-
dence condition. Some authors (in particular Little
1950 and Samuelson 1967) argued that seeking
inter-profile consistency in any form (including
Arrow’s ‘independence’ condition) is largely gra-
tuitous. It was also argued that traditional welfare
economics had never sought such a condition, and
because of the crucial use of condition I, ‘Arrow’s
work has no relevance to the traditional theory of
welfare economics, which culminates in the
Bergson–Samuelson formulations’ (Little 1950,
pp. 423–5). ‘For Bergson,’ argued Samuelson
(1967), ‘one and only one of the . . . possible
patterns of individuals’ orderings is needed’
(pp. 48–9), and the question of inter-profile con-
sistency does not arise.
In response to this line of objection, several
‘single-profile impossibility theorems’ in the
spirit of Arrow’s original theorem have been
derived and discussed (see particularly Parks
1976; Kemp and Ng 1976; Pollak 1979; Roberts
1980b; Rubinstein 1981; Hurley 1985). These
results depend on dropping inter-profile consis-
tency in favour of rather strong intra-profile
requirements, typically including some condition
of single-profile neutrality, requiring that whatever
combination of individual orderings be decisive for
establishing xRy should be sufficient for
establishing aRb if each individual ranking over
Social Choice
(x, y) is the same as that over (a, b) in that given
profile. The nature of the alternatives – whether
x and y, or a and b – is, thus, not to make any
difference, in relating individual preferences over
particular pairs to social preference over those pairs,
for any given profile of individual preferences.
These results are interesting, but it must be
noted that the requirements on which they are
based (e.g., of single-profile neutrality) are rather
strong. Also the dictatorial result that follows
from the other conditions is that of single-profile
dictatorship, which might not be thought to be as
objectionable as the existence of one inter-profile
dictator who wins for every possible preference
profile (as in Arrow’s theorem).
No matter what one thinks of these single-
profile impossibility results, it can certainly be
argued that the original objection raised by Little
and Samuelson about the relevance of inter-profile
conditions for social choice theory is hard to sus-
tain. Given the motivation underlying demands
for consistency in the relation between individual
preferences and social choice, it is not at all clear
why such consistency requirements should be
thought to be applicable only for a given profile
and not between different profiles of individual
preferences (no matter how close these profiles are
in relevant respects).
It could, of course, be argued that utility order-
ings (or preferences) are not an adequate informa-
tional base anyway for social choice, and if that
position were taken, then the very idea of a social
welfare function would have to be rejected in
favour of some richer informational formulation,
such as a social welfare functional SWFL. If, on
the other hand, the motivation underlying the use
of a social welfare function is accepted, and it is
agreed that for a given preference n-tuple (i.e., a
given profile), there is only one social ordering,
then it is not clear why it would be thought to be
perfectly okay that social preferences might
change over a given pair when there is a change
of individual preferences over some pair of alter-
natives quite unconnected with this particular one.
The need for some interprofile consistency is hard
to deny altogether. It could, of course, be argued
that Arrow’s particular interprofile condition is
not the appropriate one to use for inter-profile
13
consistency, but that would not be an objection
to inter-profile conditions as such, only to the
particular formulation of Arrow’s condition I. It
should also be noted that there are other inter-
profile conditions that can be used in order to
generate impossibility results like Arrow’s, with-
out any use of condition I (see in particular
Chichilnisky 1982).
If Arrow’s condition I is dropped, a number of
alternative possibilities do, in fact, open up for
social choice procedures. For one thing, ‘posi-
tional’ information can be used to rank alternative
social states and to arrive at social choice. In fact,
in an early contribution to social choice theory,
Borda (1781) had used a decision procedure that
violates condition I in arriving at overall rankings
based on rank-order weights. This method – often
called the Borda rule – is a special case of a
general class of ‘positional’ rules. The general
properties of ‘positional’ rules have been fruit-
fully investigated by Gärdenfors (1973) and Fine
and Fine (1974), among others. The Borda ruling
in particular has also received attention, and var-
ious particular rules have been investigated, criti-
cally examined and axiomatized (see Young
1974a; Fishburn and Gehrlein 1976; Hansson
and Sahlquist 1976; Gardner 1977; Farkas and
Nitzan 1979; and Nitzan and Rubinstein 1981,
among others).
Positional rules take note of the fact that an
alternative x preferred to another alternative y may
be proximate to each other in a person’s prefer-
ence ordering without any other alternative in
between, or may be separated by the existence of
one or more other alternatives intermediate
between the two. The rationale of positional
rules relates to attaching importance to the placing
of intermediate alternatives in individual prefer-
ences, which can be taken as suggesting that the
gap between the two must be, other things given,
larger. This argument is not entirely convincing.
Many intermediate alternatives can be placed in a
small interval, while large intervals may happen to
be empty because of the contingent fact that there
happens to be no other alternative that fits in just
there. On the other hand, if information is thought
to be extremely hard to get in social choice (a view
that was certainly taken by Borda 1781), then it is
14
not entirely unreasonable to attach some signifi-
cance to the fact that the placing of intermediate
alternatives might be indicative of something.
With some implicit assumption of uniformity of
distribution of alternatives over the preference
line (or some other suitable belief), the positional
rules may have some clear rationale, and the
Borda rule in particular might be particularly
handy and useful.
It is possible to use positional information also
in the context of richer informational base, e.g.,
when interpersonal comparisons of utilities are
permissible. Indeed ‘interpersonal positional
rules’ may have some distinct advantage both
(1) over rules that make non-positional use of
interpersonally comparable individual orderings,
and (2) over non-comparable positional rules.
Such interpersonal positional rules may also be
demonstrably more reasonable, in some contexts,
than voting procedures like the majority rule
which use neither interpersonal comparisons nor
positional information (on this see Sen 1977b;
Gaertner 1983).
Concluding Remarks
In understanding the literature of social choice
theory it is important to bear in mind that while
there are considerable analytical similarities
between different problems tackled in this vast
literature, the interpretations of the results and of
their implications must take note of the particular
nature of each of the substantively different prob-
lems. The axiomatic method, which has been so
extensively used in the literature, offers enormous
scope for efficient economy, but that economy
will be self-defeating if the substantive differences
are not carefully taken into account in interpreting
exactly the content of the theorems derived. For
example, the classic ‘impossibility’ result of
Arrow may impose informational constraints that
are much more reasonable in aggregating political
preferences of different individuals over a small
set of alternative proposals (or candidates) than in
arriving at aggregative judgements of social jus-
tice taking note of conflicting individual interests
over possible distributions of commodity vectors.
There is sometimes a temptation to see social
choice theory as providing a particular ‘method’
Social Choice
of dealing with problems of aggregation. There is
some truth in this diagnosis, in the sense that the
discipline of axiomatic procedures has some
exacting demands. On the other hand, the axioms
can vary a great deal, and the interpretation of the
axioms also will vary with the nature of the prob-
lems considered. The monolithic view of some-
thing called ‘the social-choice-theoretic
approach’, which is often referred to both by
those who wish to use it and those who wish to
criticize it, may be deeply misleading. For some
arguments on different sides on this question, see
Elster and Hylland (1986).
There are, in fact, two different ways of seeing
social choice theory. First, it is a field, and in this
field there is scope for having different
approaches. There are many problems of interper-
sonal aggregation, and in the broader sense, social
choice theory is a field in which such
aggregation – of different types – is studied. Sec-
ond, social choice theory also provides a method
of analysis, in which the insistence on the explic-
itness of axioms and on the clarity of assumptions
imposes exacting formulational demands. Indeed,
some of the more notable achievements of social
choice theory have come from this insistence on
explicitness and clarity (e.g., Arrow’s own dem-
onstration of the impossibility of combining a set
of assumptions that were being implicitly invoked
in the literature of the welfare economics of that
period, including eschewing interpersonal com-
parisons of utility). While the second interpreta-
tion is a narrower one than the first, it is
nevertheless broad enough to permit different
types of axioms to be used, and different political,
economic and social beliefs to be incorporated in
the axiom structure. Neither interpretation would
give any cogency to the search for ‘the social-
choice-theoretic approach’.
One reason why social choice theory has
received as much attention as it has in the last
few decades relates to the importance of the field
with which that theory has been concerned (and
which characterizes that theory in the broader
sense). Another reason has been the fruitfulness
of making implicit ideas explicit, and of following
their implications consistently and clearly. As a
methodological discipline, social choice theory
Social Choice
has contributed a great deal to clarifying problems
that had been obscure earlier. While insistence on
clarity at all costs has also some limitations
(sometimes the narrowness of the axiom structure
used in social choice theory has indeed been seen
as a limitation), social choice theory has undoubt-
edly been a creative tradition among other meth-
odological traditions that can be used to analyse
economic, social and political problems involving
group aggregation. The vast literature surveyed in
this article can be ultimately judged by what has
been achieved in terms of clarifying the obscure
and illuminating the unclear. Perhaps the suc-
cesses have been rather mixed, but that fact is
not surprising.
See Also
▶ Arrow’s Theorem
▶ Constitutions, Economic Approach To
▶ Public Choice
▶ social Choice (New Developments)
▶ Social Welfare Function
Bibliography
Aldrich, J. 1977. The dilemma of a paretian liberal: Some
consequences of Sen’s theorem. Public Choice 30:
1–21.
Archibald, G.C., and D. Donaldson. 1979. Notes on eco-
nomic equality. Journal of Public Economics 12:
205–214.
Arrow, K.J. 1951. Social choice and individual values.
New York: Wiley.
Arrow, K.J. 1977. Extended sympathy and the possibility
of social choice. American Economic Review 67:
219–225.
Arrow, K.J., and H. Raynaud. 1986. Social choice and
multicriterion decision-making. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Austen-Smith, D. 1982. Restricted Pareto and rights. Jour-
nal of Economic Theory 26: 89–99.
Baigent, N. 1981. Decomposition of minimal libertarian-
ism. Economic Letters 7: 29–32.
Barbera, S. 1977. Manipulation of social decision func-
tions. Journal of Economic Theory 15: 226–278.
Barnes, J. 1980. Freedom, rationality and paradox. Cana-
dian Journal of Philosophy 10: 545–565.
15
Barthelemy, J.P. 1983. Arrow’s theorem: Unusual domains
and extended codomains. In Pattanaik and Salles
(1983).
Basu, K. 1979. Revealed preference of Governments. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Basu, K. 1984. The right to give up rights. Economica 51:
413–422.
Batra, R.M., and P.K. Pattanaik. 1972. On some sugges-
tions for having non-binary social choice functions.
Theory and Decision 3: 1–11.
Baumol, W.J. 1952. Welfare economics and the theory of
the state. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bentham, J. 1789. An introduction to the principles of
morals and legislation. London: Payne. Reprinted,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.
Bergson, A. 1938. A reformulation of certain aspects of
welfare economics. Quarterly Journal of Economics
52: 310–334.
Bernholz, P. 1980. A general social dilemma: Profitable
exchange and intransitive group preference. Zeitschrift
für Nationalökonomie 40: 1–23.
Bezembinder, Th, and P. van Acker. 1979. A note on Sen’s
partial comparability model. Nijmegen: Department of
Psychology, Katholieke Universiteit.
Binmore, K. 1976. Social choice and parties. Review of
Economic Studies 43: 459–464.
Black, D. 1948. On the rationale of group decision making.
Journal of Political Economy 56: 23–34.
Black, D. 1958. The theory of committees and elections.
London: Cambridge University Press.
Blackorby, C. 1975. Degrees of cardinality and aggregate
partial orderings. Econometrica 43: 845–852.
Blackorby, C., D. Donaldson, and J.A. Weymark. 1984.
Social choice with interpersonal utility comparisons.
International Economic Review 25: 327–356.
Blair, D.H., and E. Muller. 1983. Essential aggregation
procedures on restricted domains of preferences. Jour-
nal of Economic Theory 30: 34–53.
Blair, D.H., and R.A. Pollak. 1979. Collective rationality
and dictatorship: The scope of the Arrow theorem.
Journal of Economic Theory 21: 186–194.
Blair, D.H., and R.A. Pollak. 1982. Acyclic collective
choice rules. Econometrica 50: 931–943.
Blair, D.H., G. Bordes, J.S. Kelly, and K. Suzumura. 1976.
Impossibility theorems without collective rationality.
Journal of Economic Theory 13: 361–379.
Blau, J.H. 1957. The existence of a social welfare function.
Econometrica 25: 302–313.
Blau, J.H. 1975. Liberal values and independence. Review
of Economic Studies 42: 413–420.
Blau, J.H. 1976. Neutrality, monotonicity and the right of
veto: A comment. Econometrica 44: 603.
Blau, J.H. 1979. Semiorders and collective choice. Journal
of Economic Theory 21: 195–206.
Blau, J.H., and R. Deb. 1977. Social decision functions and
veto. Econometrica 45: 871–879.
Bonner, J. 1986. Politics, economics and welfare. Brigh-
ton: Wheatsheaf.
16
Borda, J.C. 1781. Memoire sur les élections au scrutin.
Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences; English
translation by A. de Grazia, Isis 44 (1953).
Bordes, G. 1976. Consistency, rationality and collective
choice. Review of Economic Studies 43: 447–457.
Bose, A. 1975. Marxian and post-marxian political econ-
omy. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Brams, S.J. 1976. Paradoxes in politics. New York: Free
Press.
Brams, S.J., and P.C. Fishburn. 1983. Approval voting.
Boston: Birkhäuser.
Breyer, F. 1977. The liberal paradox, decisiveness over
issues, and domain restrictions. Zeitschrift für
Nationalökonomie 37: 45–60.
Breyer, F., and R. Gardner. 1980. Liberal paradox, game
equilibrium and Gibbard optimum. Public Choice 35:
469–481.
Breyer, F., and G.A. Gigliotti. 1980. Empathy and respect
for the right of others. Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie
40: 59–64.
Brown, D.J. 1974. An approximate solution to Arrow’s
problem. Journal of Economic Theory 9: 375–383.
Brown, D.J. 1975. Aggregation of preferences. Journal of
Economics 89: 456–469.
Buchanan, J.M., and G. Tullock. 1962. The calculus of
consent. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Camacho, A. 1974. Societies and social decision functions.
In Leinfellner and Kohler (1974).
Campbell, D.E. 1976. Democratic preference functions.
Journal of Economic Theory 12: 259–272.
Campbell, D.E. 1980. Algorithms for social choice func-
tions. Review of Economic Studies 47: 617–627.
Champsaur, P., and G. Laroque. 1982. Strategic behavior in
decentralized planning procedures. Econometrica 50:
325–344.
Chichilnisky, G. 1982. Social aggregation rules and conti-
nuity. Quarterly Journal of Economics 96: 337–352.
Chichilnisky, G., and G. Heal. 1983. Necessary and suffi-
cient conditions for a resolution of the social choice
paradox. Journal of Economic Theory 31: 68–87.
Condorcet, M.de. 1785. Essai sur l’Application de
l’Analyse à la Probabilité des Décisions Rendues à le
Pluralité des Voix. Paris.
Coughlin, P.J. 1986. Rights and the private Pareto princi-
ple. Economica 53: 303–320.
Crawford, V.P. 1979. A procedure for generating Pareto-
efficient egalitarian-equivalent allocations.
Econometrica 47: 49–60.
Crawford, V.P., and W.P. Heller. 1979. Fair division with
indivisible commodities. Journal of Economic Theory
21: 10–27.
d’Aspremont, D. 1985. Axioms for social welfare order-
ings in Hurwicz, Schmeidler and Sonnenschein (1985).
d’Aspremont, C., and L. Gevers. 1977. Equity and infor-
mational basis of collective choice. Review of Eco-
nomic Studies 46: 199–210.
Dasgupta, P., and G. Heal. 1979. Economic theory and
exhaustible resources. London/Cambridge: James
Nisbet/Cambridge University Press.
Social Choice
Dasgupta, P., P. Hammond, and E. Maskin. 1979. The
implementation of social choice rules: Some general
results on incentive compatibility. Review of Economic
Studies 46: 185–216.
Davis, O.A., M.H. De Groot, and M.J. Hinich. 1972. Social
preference orderings and majority rule. Econometrica
40: 147–157.
Deb, R. 1976. On Schwartz’s rule. Journal of Economic
Theory 16: 103–110.
der Graaff, J. 1957. Theoretical welfare economics. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deschamps, R., and L. Gevers. 1978. Leximin and utilitar-
ian rules: A joint characterisation. Journal of Economic
Theory 17: 143–163.
Dummett, M. 1984. Voting procedures. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Dummett, M., and R. Farquharson. 1961. Stability in vot-
ing. Econometrica 29: 133–143.
Dutta, B. 1980. On the possibility of consistent voting
procedures. Review of Economic Studies 47: 603–616.
Dutta, B., and P.K. Pattanaik. 1978. On nicely consistent
voting systems. Econometrica 46: 163–170.
Elster, J., and A. Hylland (eds.). 1986. Foundations of
social choice theory. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Farkas, D., and S. Nitzan. 1979. The Borda rule and Pareto
stability: A comment. Econometrica 47: 1305–1306.
Farquharson, R. 1956. Straightforwardness in voting para-
doxes. Oxford Economic Papers 8: 80–89.
Farrell, M.J. 1976. Liberalism in the theory of social
choice. Review of Economic Studies 43: 3–10.
Feldman, A., and A. Kirman. 1974. Fairness and envy.
American Economic Review 64: 995–1005.
Ferejohn, J.A. 1978. The distribution of rights in society. In
Gottinger and Leinfellner (1978).
Fine, B.J. 1975. A note on interpersonal aggregation and
partial comparability. Econometrica 43: 173–174.
Fine, B.J., and K. Fine. 1974. Social choice and individual
ranking. Review of Economic Studies 41(303–22):
459–475.
Fishburn, P.C. 1973. The theory of social choice.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fishburn, P.C. 1974. On collective rationality and a gener-
alized impossibility theorem. Review of Economic
Studies 41: 445–459.
Fishburn, P.C., and W.V. Gehrlein. 1976. Borda’s rule,
positional voting, and condorcet’s simple majority prin-
ciple. Public Choice 28: 79–88.
Foley, D. 1967. Resource allocation in the public sector.
Yale Economic Essays 7: 73–76.
Fountain, J. 1980. Bowley’s analysis of bilateral monopoly
and Sen’s liberal paradox in collective choice theory:
A note. Quarterly Journal of Economics 95.
Gaertner, W. 1983. Equity- and inequity-type Borda rules.
Mathematical Social Sciences 4: 137–154.
Gaertner, W. 1986. Pareto, independent rights exercising
and strategic behaviour. Journal of Economics:
Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 46.
Social Choice
Gaertner, W. and A. Heinecke. 1978. Cyclically mixed
preferences: A necessary and sufficient condition for
transitivity of the social preference relation. In
Gottinger and Leinfellner (1978).
Gaertner, W., and L. Krüger. 1981. Self-supporting prefer-
ences and individual rights: the possibility of Paretian
libertarianism. Economica 48: 17–28.
Gaertner, W., and L. Krüger. 1983. Alternative libertarian
claims and Sen’s paradox. Theory and Decision 15:
211–230.
Gärdenfors, P. 1973. Positional voting functions. Theory
and Decision 4: 1–24.
Gärdenfors, P. 1981. Rights, games and social choice.
Nous 15.
Gardner, R. 1977. The Borda game. Public Choice 30:
43–50.
Gardner, R. 1980. The strategic inconsistency of Paretian
liberalism. Public Choice 35: 241–252.
Gevers, L. 1979. On interpersonal comparability and social
welfare orderings. Econometrica 47: 75–90.
Deschamps and Gevers, L. 1979. Separability, risk-taking
and social welfare judgements. In Laffont (1979).
Gibbard, A. 1973. Manipulation of voting schemes:
A general result. Econometrica 41: 587–601.
Gibbard, A. 1974. A Pareto-consistent libertarian claim.
Journal of Economic Theory 7: 338–410.
Goldman, S.M., and C. Sussangkarn. 1978. On the concept
of fairness. Journal of Economic Theory 19: 210–216.
Gorman, W.M. 1953. Community preference fields.
Econometrica 21: 63–80.
Gottinger, H.W., and W. Leinfellner. 1978. Decision theory
and social ethics: Issues in social choice. Dordrecht:
Reidel.
Grandmont, J.M. 1978. Intermediate preferences and
majority rule. Econometrica 46: 317–330.
Green, J., and J.-J. Laffont. 1979. Incentives in public
decision making. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Grether, D.M., and C.R. Plott. 1982. Nonbinary social
choice: An impossibility theorem. Review of Economic
Studies 49: 143–149.
Groves, T., and J. Ledyard. 1977. Optimal allocation of
public goods: A solution to the ‘free rider’ problem.
Econometrica 45: 783–810.
Guha, A.S. 1972. Neutrality, monotonicity and the right of
veto. Econometrica 40: 821–826.
Hammond, P.J. 1976. Equity, Arrow’s conditions and
Rawls’ difference principle. Econometrica 44: 793–804.
Hammond, P.J. 1977. Dual interpersonal comparisons of
utility and the welfare economics of income distribu-
tion. Journal of Public Economics 6: 51–71.
Hammond, P.J. 1979. Equity in two person situation: Some
consequences. Econometrica 47: 1127–1136.
Hammond, P.J. 1981. Liberalism, independent rights, and
the Pareto principle. In Logic, methodology and philos-
ophy of sciences, ed. L.J. Cohen et al. Amsterdam:
North-Holland.
Hansson, B. 1973. The independence condition in the
theory of social choice. Theory and Decision 4.
17
Hansson, B. 1976. The existence of group preferences.
Public Choice 28: 89–98.
Hansson, B., and H. Sahlquist. 1976. A proof technique for
social choice with variable electorate. Journal of Eco-
nomic Theory 13: 193–200.
Harsanyi, J.C. 1955. Cardinal welfare, individualistic
ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility. Jour-
nal of Political Economy 63: 309–321.
Harsanyi, J.C. 1979. Bayesian decision theory, rule utili-
tarianism and Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Theory
and Decision 11: 289–318.
Herzberger, H.G. 1973. Ordinal preference and rational
choice. Econometrica 41: 187.
Hicks, J.R. 1939. Value and capital. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Hurley, S. 1985. Supervenience and the possibility of
coherence. Mind 94: 501–526.
Hurwicz, L., D. Schmeidler, and H. Sonnenschein (eds.).
1985. Social goals and social organization: Essays in
memory of Elisha Pazner. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Inada, K. 1964. A note on the simple majority decision
rule. Econometrica 37: 490–506.
Inada, K. 1969. On the simple majority decision rule.
Econometrica 32: 525–531.
Inada, K. 1970. Majority rule and rationality. Journal of
Economic Theory 2: 27–40.
Inada, K. 1984. On the economic welfare function.
Econometrica 32: 316–338.
Jain, S. 1986. Special majority rules: A necessary and
sufficient condition for quasi–transitivity with quasi–-
transitive individual preferences. Social Choice and
Welfare 3: 99–106.
Kalai, E., and E. Muller. 1977. Characterization of domains
admitting non-dictatorial social welfare functions and
nonmanipulable voting procedures. Journal of Eco-
nomic Theory 16: 457–469.
Kalai, E., and Z. Ritz. 1980. Characterization of private
alternative domains admitting Arrow social welfare
functions. Journal of Economic Theory 22: 23–36.
Kaldor, N. 1939. Welfare propositions in economics. Eco-
nomic Journal 49: 549–552.
Karni, E. 1978. Collective rationality, unanimity and lib-
eral ethics. Review of Economic Studies 45: 571–574.
Kelly, J.S. 1976. The impossibility of a just liberal.
Economica 43: 67–75.
Kelly, J.S. 1978. Arrow impossibility theorems. New York:
Academic Press.
Kelsey, D. 1984. Acyclic choice without the Pareto princi-
ple. Review of Economic Studies 51: 693–699.
Kelsey, D. 1985. The liberal paradox: A generalization.
Social Choice and Welfare 1: 245–250.
Kemp, M.C., and Y.K. Ng. 1976. On the existence of social
welfare functions, social orderings and social decision
functions. Economica 43: 59–66.
Kolm, S. Ch. 1969. The optimum production of social
justice. In Public economics, ed. J. Margolis and
H. Guitton. London: Macmillan.
18
Kramer, G.H. 1973. On a class of equilibrium conditions
for majority rule. Econometrica 41: 285–297.
Kramer, G.H. 1978. A dynamic model of political equilib-
rium. Journal of Economic Theory 16: 310–334.
Krüger, L., and W. Gaertner. 1983. Alternative libertarian
claims and Sen’s paradox. Theory and Decision 15:
211–229.
Laffont, J.J. (ed.). 1979. Aggregation and revelation of
preferences. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Larsson, B. 1983. Basic properties of the majority rule.
Lund: University of Lund.
Leinfellner, W., and E. Kohler (eds.). 1974. Developments
in the methodology of social sciences. Dordrecht:
Reidel.
Levi, I. 1982. Liberty and welfare. In Sen and Williams
(1982).
Little, I.M.D. 1950. A critique of welfare economics.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2nd edn, 1957.
Machina, M., and R. Parks. 1981. On path independent
randomized choices. Econometrica 49: 1345–1347.
Mas-Colell, A., and H.F. Sonnenschein. 1972. General
possibility theorems for group decisions. Review of
Economic Studies 39: 185–192.
Maskin, E. 1976. Social welfare functions on restricted
domain. Mimeo.
Maskin, E. 1978. A theorem on utilitarianism. Review of
Economic Studies 45: 93–96.
Matsumoto, Y. 1985. Non-binary social choice: Revealed
preferential interpretation. Economica 52: 185–194.
Mayston, D.J. 1974. The idea of social choice. London:
Macmillan.
McKelvey, R.D. 1979. General conditions for global
intransitivities in formal voting models. Econometrica
47: 1085–1112.
McLean, I.S. 1980. Liberty, equality and the Pareto prin-
ciple: A comment on Weale. Analysis 40: 212–213.
McManus, M. 1982. Some properties of topological social
choice functions. Review of Economic Studies 49:
447–460.
Mill, J.S. 1859. On liberty. Reprinted, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1974.
Monjardet, B. 1979. Duality in the theory of social choice.
In Laffont (1979).
Moulin, H. 1983. The strategy of social choice. Amster-
dam: North-Holland.
Mueller, D.C. 1979. Public choice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Murakami, Y. 1968. Logic and social choice. New York:
Dover.
Myerson, R.B. 1983. Utilitarianism, egalitarianism, and
the timing effect in social choice problems.
Econometrica 49: 883–897.
Ng, Y.K. 1971. The possibility of a Paretian liberal: impos-
sibility theorems and cardinal utility. Journal of Polit-
ical Economy 79: 1397–1402.
Ng, Y.K. 1979. Welfare economics. London: Macmillan.
Nitzan, S., and J. Paroush. 1985. Collective decision mak-
ing: An economic outlook. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Social Choice
Nitzan, S., and A. Rubinstein. 1981. A further characteri-
zation of the Borda Ranking Methods. Public Choice
36: 153–158.
Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Parks, R.P. 1976. An impossibility theorem for fixed pref-
erences: A dictatorial Bergson–Samuelson social wel-
fare function. Review of Economic Studies 43:
447–450.
Pattanaik, P.K. 1971. Voting and collective choice. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pattanaik, P.K. 1973. On the stability of sincere voting
situations. Journal of Economic Theory 6: 558–574.
Pattanaik, P.K. 1978. Strategy and group choice. Amster-
dam: North-Holland.
Pattanaik, P.K., and M. Salles (eds.). 1983. Social choice
and welfare. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Pazner, E.A., and D. Schmeidler. 1974. A difficulty in the
concept of fairness. Review of Economic Studies 41:
441–443.
Peleg, B. 1978. Consistent voting systems. Econometrica
46: 153–162.
Peleg, B. 1984. Game theoretic analysis of voting in com-
mittees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plott, C.R. 1967. A notion of equilibrium and its possibility
under majority rule. American Economic Review 57:
788–806.
Plott, C.R. 1973. Path independence, rationality and social
choice. Econometrica 41: 1075–1091.
Plott, C.R. 1976. Axiomatic social choice theory: An over-
view and interpretation. American Journal of Political
Science 20: 511–596.
Pollak, R.A. 1979. Bergson-Samuelson social welfare
functions and the theory of social choice. Quarterly
Journal of Economics 93: 73–90.
Ray, P. 1973. Independence of irrelevant alternatives.
Econometrica 41: 987–991.
Riley, J. 1986. Liberal utilitarianism: Social choice theory
and J.S. Mill’s Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Robbins, L. 1932. An essay on the nature and significance
of economic science. London: Macmillan.
Robbins, L. 1938. Interpersonal companions of utility.
Economic Journal 48: 635–641.
Roberts, K.W.S. 1980a. Interpersonal comparability and
social choice theory. Review of Economic Studies 47:
421–439.
Roberts, K.W.S. 1980b. Social choice theory: The single
and multiple-profile approaches. Review of Economic
Studies 47: 441–450.
Rubinstein, A. 1981. The single profile analogues to mul-
tiple profile theorems: Mathematical logic’s approach.
Murray Hill: Bell Laboratories.
Salles, M. 1976. Characterization of transitive individual
preferences for quasi-transitive collective preferences
under simple games. International Economic Review
17: 308–318.
Samuelson, P.A. 1947. Foundations of economic analysis.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Social Choice
Samuelson, P.A. 1950. Evaluation of real national income.
Oxford Economic Papers 2: 1–19.
Samuelson, P.A. 1967. Arrow’s mathematical politics. In
Human values and economic policy, ed. S. Hook.
New York: New York University Press.
Saposnik, R. 1975. On transitivity of the social preference
relation under simple majority rule. Journal of Eco-
nomic Theory 10: 1–7.
Satterthwaite, M. 1975. Strategy-proofness and Arrow’s
conditions: Existence and correspondence theorems
for voting procedures and social welfare functions.
Journal of Economic Theory 10: 187–217.
Schick, F. 1969. Arrow’s proof and the logic of preference.
Journal of Philosophy 36: 127–144.
Schmeidler, D. and H. Sonnenschein. 1978. Two proofs of
the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem on the possibility of
a strategyproof social choice function. In Gottinger and
Leinfellner (1978).
Schmeidler, D., and K. Vind. 1972. Fair net trades.
Econometrica 40: 637–642.
Schofield, N. 1978. Instability of simple dynamic games.
Review of Economic Studies 40: 575–594.
Schofield, N. 1983. Generic instability of majority rule.
Review of Economic Studies 50: 695–705.
Schwartz, T. 1970. On the possibility of rational policy
evaluation. Theory and Decision 1: 89–106.
Schwartz, T. 1972. Rationality and the myth of the maxi-
mum. Noûs 6: 97–117.
Schwartz, T. 1986. The logic of collective choice.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Scitovsky, T. 1941. A note on welfare propositions in
economics. Review of Economic Studies 9: 77–88.
Seidl, C. 1975. On liberal values. Zeitschrift für
Nationalökonomie 35: 257–292.
Sen, A.K. 1966. A possibility theorem on majority deci-
sions. Econometrica 34: 75–79.
Sen, A.K. 1969. Quasi-transivity, rational choice and collec-
tive decisions. Review of Economic Studies 36: 381–393.
Sen, A.K. 1970. Collective choice and social welfare. San
Francisco/Edinburgh: Holden-Day/Oliver & Boyd.
Republished, Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Sen, A.K. 1977a. Social choice theory: A re-examination.
Econometrica 45: 58–89.
Sen, A.K. 1977b. On weights and measures: Informational
constraints in social welfare analysis. Econometrica 45:
1539–1572.
Sen, A.K. 1982. Choice, welfare and measurement.
Oxford/Cambridge MA: MIT Press/Blackwell.
Sen, A.K. 1983. Liberty and social choice. Journal of
Philosophy 80: 5–28.
Sen, A.K. 1986. Social choice theory. In Handbook of
mathematical economics, vol. III, ed. K.J. Arrow and
M. Intriligator. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Sen, A.K., and P.K. Pattanaik. 1969. Necessary and suffi-
cient conditions for rational choice under majority deci-
sion. Journal of Economic Theory 1: 178–202.
19
Sen, A.K., and B. Williams. 1982. Utilitarianism and
beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sengupta, M. 1980. The knowledge assumption in the
theory of strategic voting. Econometrica 49:
1301–1304.
Sengupta, M., and B. Dutta. 1979. A condition for Nash
stability under binary and democratic group decision
functions. Theory and Decision 10: 293–310.
Slutsky, S. 1977. A characterization of societies with con-
sistent majority decision. Review of Economic Studies
44: 211–226.
Strasnick, S. 1976. Social choice theory and the derivation
of Rawls’ difference principle. Journal of Philosophy
73: 85–99.
Sugden, R. 1981. The political economy of public choice.
Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Sugden, R. 1985. Liberty, preference and choice. Econom-
ics and Philosophy 1: 213–230.
Suppes, P. 1966. Some formal models of grading princi-
ples. Synthese 6: 284–306.
Suzumura, K. 1978. On the consistency of libertarian
claims. Review of Economic Studies 45, 329–342.
A correction, 46, (1979), 743.
Suzumura, K. 1980. Liberal paradox and the voluntary
exchange of rights-exercising. Journal of Economic
Theory 22: 407–442.
Suzumura, K. 1983. Rational choice, collective decisions and
social welfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Svensson, L.G. 1980. Equity among generations.
Econometrica 48: 1251–1256.
Tullock, G. 1967. The general irrelevance of the general
possibility theorem. Quarterly Journal of Economics
81: 256–270.
Tullock, G. 1969. Toward a mathematics of politics. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Varian, H. 1974. Equity, envy and efficiency. Journal of
Economic Theory 9: 63–91.
Varian, H. 1975. Distributive justice, welfare economics
and the theory of fairness. Philosophy and Public
Affairs 4: 223–247.
Vickrey, W. 1945. Measuring marginal utility by reactions
to risk. Econometrica 13: 319–333.
Vickrey, W. 1960. Utility, strategy and social decision
rules. Quarterly Journal of Economics 75: 507–525.
Ward, B. 1965. Majority voting and alternative forms of
public enterprise. In The public economy of urban
communities, ed. J. Margolis. Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins Press.
Weale, A. 1980. The impossibility of a liberal egalitarian-
ism. Analysis 40: 13–19.
Webster, N. 1986. Liberals and information. Theory and
Decision 20: 41–52.
Weymark, J.A. 1983. Arrow’s theorem with social quasi-
orderings. Public Choice 42: 235–246.
Wilson, R.B. 1972. Social choice theory without the Pareto
principle. Journal of Economic Theory 5: 478–486.
20 Social Choice

Wilson, R.B. 1975. On the theory of aggregation. Journal Young, H.P. 1974a. An axiomatization of the Borda’s rule.
of Economic Theory 10: 89–99. Journal of Economic Theory 9: 43–52.
Wriglesworth, J. 1985. Libertarian conflicts in social Young, H.P. 1974b. A note on preference aggregation.
choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Econometrica 42: 1129–1131.