Disposing Dictators, Demystifying Voting Paradoxes
Social Choice Analysis

This book is a positive analysis of voting 'paradoxes' and argues that negative 'impossibility' results are not justified.

Donald G. Saari (Author)

9780521516051, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 August 2008

256 pages, 6 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.47 kg

'The book is definitely of interest to students and researchers from many different areas having to deal with aggregation problems. … there is a lot to learn from this book for everyone who cares about whether voters elect what they really want.' Journal of the American Statistical Association

We decide by elections, but do we elect who the voters really want? The answer, as we have learned over the last two centuries, is 'not necessarily'. What a negative, frightening assertion about a principal tool of democracy! This negativism has been supported by two hundred years of published results showing how bad the situation can be. This expository, largely non-technical book is the first to find positive results showing that the situation is not anywhere as dire and negative as we have been led to believe. Instead there are surprisingly simple explanations for the negative assertions, and positive conclusions can be obtained.

1. Subtle complexity of social choice
2. Dethroning dictators
3. Voting dictionaries
4. Explaining all voting paradoxes
5. Deliver us from plurality vote
6. Appendix.

Subject Areas: Probability & statistics [PBT], Political economy [KCP], Economics [KC], Social research & statistics [JHBC]