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A Conditional Defense of Plurality Rule: Generalizing May's Theorem in a Restricted Informational Environment

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  • Robert E. Goodin
  • Christian List

Abstract

May's theorem famously shows that, in social decisions between two options, simple majority rule uniquely satisfies four appealing conditions. Although this result is often cited in support of majority rule, it has never been extended beyond decisions based on pairwise comparisons of options. We generalize May's theorem to many‐option decisions where voters each cast one vote. Surprisingly, plurality rule uniquely satisfies May's conditions. This suggests a conditional defense of plurality rule: If a society's balloting procedure collects only a single vote from each voter, then plurality rule is the uniquely compelling electoral procedure. To illustrate the conditional nature of this claim, we also identify a richer informational environment in which approval voting, not plurality rule, is supported by a May‐style argument.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert E. Goodin & Christian List, 2006. "A Conditional Defense of Plurality Rule: Generalizing May's Theorem in a Restricted Informational Environment," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(4), pages 940-949, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:50:y:2006:i:4:p:940-949
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00225.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Jac C. Heckelman & Robi Ragan, 2021. "Symmetric Scoring Rules And A New Characterization Of The Borda Count," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(1), pages 287-299, January.
    2. Burka, Dávid & Puppe, Clemens & Szepesváry, László & Tasnádi, Attila, 2022. "Voting: A machine learning approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 299(3), pages 1003-1017.
    3. Laurent Bartholdi & Wade Hann‐Caruthers & Maya Josyula & Omer Tamuz & Leeat Yariv, 2021. "Equitable Voting Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(2), pages 563-589, March.
    4. Barberà, Salvador & Bossert, Walter, 2023. "Opinion aggregation: Borda and Condorcet revisited," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    5. Michel Balinski & Rida Laraki, 2020. "Majority judgment vs. majority rule," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 429-461, March.
    6. Nehring, Klaus & Puppe, Clemens, 2019. "Resource allocation by frugal majority rule," Working Paper Series in Economics 131, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    7. Federica Ceron & Stéphane Gonzalez, 2019. "A characterization of Approval Voting without the approval balloting assumption," Working Papers halshs-02440615, HAL.
    8. Stefan Wintein & Conrad Heilmann, 2022. "Liberal political equality does not imply proportional representation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(1), pages 63-91, July.
    9. Stergios Athanasoglou & Somouaoga Bonkoungou & Lars Ehlers, 2023. "Strategy-proof preference aggregation and the anonymity-neutrality tradeoff," Working Papers 519, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics.
    10. Josep Freixas & Montserrat Pons, 2021. "An extension and an alternative characterization of May’s theorem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 302(1), pages 137-150, July.
    11. Yeawon Yoo & Adolfo R. Escobedo, 2021. "A New Binary Programming Formulation and Social Choice Property for Kemeny Rank Aggregation," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 18(4), pages 296-320, December.

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