Michel Regenwetter, Bernard Grofman, A. A. J. Marley, Ilia TsetlinCambridge University Press, 5/15/2006EAN 9780521829687, ISBN10: 0521829682Hardcover, 258 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cmLanguage: EnglishBehavioral Social Choice looks at the probabilistic foundations of collective decision-making rules. The authors challenge much of the existing theoretical wisdom about social choice processes, and seek to restore faith in the possibility of democratic decision-making. In particular, they argue that worries about the supposed prevalence of majority rule cycles that would preclude groups from reaching a final decision about what alternative they prefer have been greatly overstated. In practice, majority rule can be expected to work well in most real-world settings. Furthermore, if there is a problem, they show that the problem is more likely to be one of sample estimates missing the majority winner in a close contest (e.g., Bush-Gore) than a problem about cycling. The authors also provide new mathematical tools to estimate the prevalence of cycles as a function of sample size and insights into how alternative model specifications can change our estimates of social orderings.Part I. Probabilistic Models of Social Choice Behavior1. The lack of theoretical and practical support for majority cycles2. A general concept of majority rulePart II. Applications of Probabilistic Models to Empirical Data3. On the model dependence versus robustness of social choice results4. Constructing majority preferences from subset choice dataPart III. A General Statistical Sampling and Bayesian Inference Framework5. Majority rule in a statistical sampling and Bayesian inference framework6. Conclusions and directions for future behavioral social choice research.
