Empirical social choice: An introduction

Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter (2014): Empirical social choice: An introduction. Forthcoming in: Public Choice (2014)

Abstract

The year 2012 was the 30th anniversary of William H. Riker’s modern classic Liberalism against populism (1982) and is marked by the present special issue. In this introduction, we seek to identify some core elements and evaluate the current status of the Rikerian research program and its empirical applications. Special attention is given to three phenomena and their possible empirical manifestations: The instability of social choice in the form of (1) the possibility of majority cycles, (2) the non-robustness of social choices given alternative voting methods, and (3) the possibility of various forms of manipulation of the decisions (heresthetics). These topics are then connected to the contributions to the current special issue.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Social choice; Condorcet’s Paradox; voting theory; voting paradoxes; preferences; heresthetics.
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B2 - History of Economic Thought since 1925; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B3 - History of Economic Thought: Individuals; D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics; D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D69 - Other; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D71 - Social Choice ; Clubs ; Committees ; Associations; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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