IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boc/bocoec/529.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Democratically Elected Aristocracies

Author

Listed:
  • David Heyd

    (Hebrew University)

  • Uzi Segal

    (Boston College)

Abstract

The article suggests a formal model of a two-tier voting procedure, which unlike traditional voting systems does not presuppose that ev- ery vote counts the same. In deciding a particular issue voters are called in the first round to assign categories of their fellow-citizens with differential voting power (or weights) according to the special position or concern individuals are perceived as having with regard to that issue. In the second stage, voters vote on the issue itself accord- ing to their substantive view and their votes are counted in the light of the differential weights assigned in the first round. We analyze the formal and the philosophical reasons that support the model.

Suggested Citation

  • David Heyd & Uzi Segal, 2002. "Democratically Elected Aristocracies," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 529, Boston College Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:529
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp529.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amrita Dhillon & Jean-Francois Mertens, 1999. "Relative Utilitarianism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(3), pages 471-498, May.
    2. Samet, Dov & Schmeidler, David, 2003. "Between liberalism and democracy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 213-233, June.
    3. Edi Karni, 1998. "Impartiality: Definition and Representation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(6), pages 1405-1416, November.
    4. Gerard Debreu, 1959. "Topological Methods in Cardinal Utility Theory," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 76, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    5. Uzi Segal, 2000. "Let's Agree That All Dictatorships Are Equally Bad," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 569-589, June.
    6. John C. Harsanyi, 1953. "Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(5), pages 434-434.
    7. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 309-309.
    8. Edi Karni & Zvi Safra, 2002. "Individual Sense of Justice: A Utility Representation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 263-284, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ben Saunders, 2012. "Defining the demos," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 11(3), pages 280-301, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Segal, Uzi & Sobel, Joel, 2002. "Min, Max, and Sum," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 126-150, September.
    2. Omer F. Baris, 2018. "Timing effect in bargaining and ex ante efficiency of the relative utilitarian solution," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(4), pages 547-556, June.
    3. Thibault Gajdos & Feriel Kandil, 2008. "The ignorant observer," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 193-232, August.
    4. Marcus Pivato, 2009. "Twofold optimality of the relative utilitarian bargaining solution," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 32(1), pages 79-92, January.
    5. Pivato, Marcus, 2007. "A non-monetary form of Clarke pivotal voting," MPRA Paper 3964, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Ma, Sinong & Safra, Zvi, 2016. "Fairness and Utilitarianism without Independence," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 20, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    7. Sinong Ma & Zvi Safra, 2019. "Fairness and utilitarianism without independence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(1), pages 29-52, February.
    8. Juan Moreno-Ternero & John E. Roemer, 2004. "Impartiality and Priority. Part 1: The Veil of Ignorance," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1477A, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised May 2005.
    9. Sprumont, Yves, 2018. "Belief-weighted Nash aggregation of Savage preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 222-245.
    10. Marc Fleurbaey & Stéphane Zuber, 2021. "Fair Utilitarianism," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 370-401, May.
    11. Al-Najjar, Nabil I. & Pomatto, Luciano, 2020. "Aggregate risk and the Pareto principle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    12. Yves Sprumont, 2013. "On relative egalitarianism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(4), pages 1015-1032, April.
    13. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gevers, Louis, 2002. "Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 459-541, Elsevier.
    14. Yves Sprumont, 2020. "Nash welfarism and the distributive implications of informational constraints," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(1), pages 49-64, April.
    15. Brandl, Florian, 2021. "Belief-averaging and relative utilitarianism," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    16. Pivato, Marcus, 2006. "Approximate implementation of Relative Utilitarianism via Groves-Clarke pivotal voting with virtual money," MPRA Paper 627, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Nehring, Klaus, 2004. "The veil of public ignorance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 247-270, December.
    18. Tilman Börgers & Yan-Min Choo, 2017. "Revealed Relative Utilitarianism," CESifo Working Paper Series 6613, CESifo.
    19. Che-Yuan Liang, 2017. "Optimal inequality behind the veil of ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 83(3), pages 431-455, October.
    20. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2017. "Fair management of social risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 666-706.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:529. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

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

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

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

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