Robust Voting under Uncertainty

Satoshi Nakada, Shmuel Nitzan and Takashi Ui
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Satoshi Nakada: School of Management, Department of Business Economics, Tokyo University of Science
Takashi Ui: Department of Economics, Hitotsubashi University

No 38, Working Papers on Central Bank Communication from University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics

Abstract: This paper proposes normative criteria for voting rules under uncertainty about individual preferences to characterize a weighted majority rule (WMR). The criteria stress the significance of responsiveness, i.e., the probability that the social outcome coincides with the realized individual preferences. A voting rule is said to be robust if, for any probability distribution of preferences, the responsiveness of at least one individual is greater than one-half. This condition is equivalent to the seemingly stronger condition requiring that, for any probability distribution of preferences and any deterministic voting rule, the responsiveness of at least one individual is greater than that under the deterministic voting rule. Our main result establishes that a voting rule is robust if and only if it is a WMR without ties. This characterization of a WMR avoiding the worst possible outcomes provides a new complement to the well-known characterization of a WMR achieving the optimal outcomes, i.e., efficiency in the set of all random voting rules.

Keywords: majority rule; weighted majority rule; responsiveness; belief-free criterion. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-mic, nep-pol and nep-upt
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Related works:
Working Paper: Robust Voting under Uncertainty (2017)
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