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On the difficulty of making social choices

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Abstract

The difficulty of making social choices seems to take on two forms: one that is related to both preferences and the method used in aggregating them and one which is related to the preferences only. In the former type the difficulty has to do with the discrepancies of outcomes resulting from various preference aggregation methods and the computation of winners in elections. Some approaches and results which take their motivation from the computability theory are discussed. The latter ‘institution-free’ type of difficulty pertains to solution theory of the voting games. We discuss the relationships between various solution concepts, e.g. uncovered set, Banks set, Copeland winners. Finally rough sets are utilized in an effort to measure the difficulty of making social choices.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, FIN-20500, Turku, Finland

    Hannu Nurmi

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  1. Hannu Nurmi
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Nurmi, H. On the difficulty of making social choices. Theor Decis 38, 99–119 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01083171

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