Consensus and the Act of Voting

José Alcantud (), R. de Andrés Calle and J.M. Cascón

Studies in Microeconomics, 2013, vol. 1, issue 1, 1-22

Abstract: In this article we are concerned with assessing the cohesiveness of a society whose individual preferences are known. We analyse the axiomatic properties of a general proposal to measure aggregate satisfaction in terms of coherence of the expressed opinions, that relies on the consensus with reference to a select social preference. The formal concept of referenced consensus measures that we introduce permits to produce a numerical social evaluation from purely ordinal individual information. A referenced consensus measure can be specialized via two ways: the specification of the representative agent, or from a practical point of view, the choice of a voting mechanism; and the measure of agreement between profiles of orderings and individual orderings. Introducing a fictitious agent, or the result of the act of voting, as a reference is fit for the common case of actual social choices. We carry out a descriptive analysis of the formal properties of referenced consensus measures with an emphasis on two relevant cases whose explicit constructions are detailed.

Keywords: Consensus; measurement; Borda rule; Copeland rule (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:miceco:v:1:y:2013:i:1:p:1-22

DOI: 10.1177/2321022213488817

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