IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hom/homoec/v21y2004p355-372.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Choice and Southern Secession in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Kelley Gary

    (Department of Economics, Washington University in St. Louis, USA)

Abstract

We have long known that collective decisions are determined not only by the underlying constellation of individual preferences, but also by the process û or rules and procedures û used to reach a decision. Outcomes may vary even while underlying individual preferences remain unchanged. This paper examines the in?uence of the various rules and procedures used to reach decisions on the matter of secession in the American South. I show that southern secession occurred, in part, because the decision processes were biased in favor of secession. By denying their respective electorates the opportunity to vote directly on the status quo of Union, by assiduously avoiding a collective ôsouthernö solution, and by encouraging separate state secession in the states of the lower South, the most ardent secessionists prevailed where otherwise they may have failed.

Suggested Citation

  • Kelley Gary, 2004. "Social Choice and Southern Secession in the United States," Homo Oeconomicus, Institute of SocioEconomics, vol. 21, pages 355-372.
    • Handle: RePEc:hom:homoec:v:21:y:2004:p:355-372
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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:hom:homoec:v:21:y:2004:p:355-372. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sohamde.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.