IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v60y1966i02p384-390_12.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Computer Simulation of the Paradox of Voting

Author

Listed:
  • Klahr, David

Abstract

This paper presents estimates of the probability that the occurrence of the Paradox of Voting, commonly known as Arrow's Paradox, will prevent the selection of a majority issue when odd-sized committees of m judges vote upon n issues. The estimates, obtained through computer simulation of the voting process, indicate that the probability of such an intransitive social ordering is lower than the ratio of intransitive outcomes to all outcomes.Many of the arguments in political theory and welfare economics dealing with the paradox (e.g., Downs, 1957; Black, 1958; Schubert, 1960) seem to have implicitly assumed that since the paradox exists, its likelihood of occurrence is very close to 1. The results in this paper may call for a re-examination of these positions.

Suggested Citation

  • Klahr, David, 1966. "A Computer Simulation of the Paradox of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(2), pages 384-390, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:60:y:1966:i:02:p:384-390_12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400127431/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. R. Abrams, 1976. "The voter's paradox and the homogeneity of individual preference orders," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 19-27, June.
    2. Mostapha Diss & Patrizia Pérez-Asurmendi, 2016. "Probabilities of Consistent Election Outcomes with Majorities Based on Difference in Support," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(5), pages 967-994, September.
    3. Shmuel Nitzan, 1985. "The vulnerability of point-voting schemes to preference variation and strategic manipulation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 349-370, January.
    4. 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.
    5. Roger Marz & Thomas Casstevens & Harold Casstevens, 1973. "The hunting of the paradox," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 97-102, June.
    6. Mostapha Diss & Eric Kamwa, 2019. "Simulations in Models of Preference Aggregation," Working Papers hal-02424936, HAL.
    7. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2001. "An Empirical Example of the Condorcet Paradox of Voting in a Large Electorate," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 107(1-2), pages 135-145, April.
    8. Leon Gleser, 1969. "The paradox of voting: Some probabilistic results," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 47-63, September.
    9. Adrian Deemen, 2014. "On the empirical relevance of Condorcet’s paradox," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 311-330, March.
    10. Thomas Hansen & Barry Prince, 1973. "The paradox of voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 103-117, June.
    11. 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.

    More about this item

    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:cup:apsrev:v:60:y:1966:i:02:p:384-390_12. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    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.