Forty years of collaboration in social choice theory: A bibliometric evaluation[Quarante années de collaboration en théorie du choix social: Une évaluation bibliométrique]

Using bibliometric analysis tools, this paper evaluates the collaboration between African and French researchers in voting theory, social choice theory, multicriteria analysis, and game theory. Our approach involves classifying researchers into four groups: (1) French researchers of French origin based in France, (2) African researchers of African origin based in France, (3) African researchers based in Africa, and (4) other researchers who do not fall into the previous groups. Based on this distinction, an exploratory analysis of the main bibliometric databases (Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar) reveals that 71 articles and 10 book chapters were co-authored by 59 authors belonging to at least two of the assumed researcher groups. The resulting database allows us to calculate various bibliometric indices that characterize the collaboration between African and French researchers over the past forty years. Our analysis shows that collaboration has been dynamic in terms of scientific output over the forty years, focusing primarily on fundamental topics such as voting and probability calculations, as well as some niche themes such as Nash implementation theory and coalition structures. While no theme has declined over time, the network has not significantly introduced new research themes.