Majority rule in the absence of a majority

Klaus Nehring and Marcus Pivato

Journal of Economic Theory, 2019, vol. 183, issue C, 213-257

Abstract: Which is the best, impartially most plausible consensus view to serve as the basis of democratic group decision when voters disagree? Assuming that the judgment aggregation problem can be framed as a matter of judging a set of binary propositions (“issues”), we develop a multi-issue majoritarian approach based on the criterion of supermajority efficiency (SME). SME reflects the idea that smaller supermajorities must yield to larger supermajorities so as to obtain better supported, more plausible group judgments. As it is based on a partial ordering, SME delivers unique outcomes only in special cases. In general, one needs to make cardinal, not just ordinal, tradeoffs between different supermajorities. Hence we axiomatically characterize the class of additive majority rules, whose (generically unique) outcome can be interpreted as the “on balance most plausible” consensus judgment.

Keywords: Judgment aggregation; Disagreement; Voting; Median rule; Supermajority efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Majority rule in the absence of a majority (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:183:y:2019:i:c:p:213-257

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2019.05.006

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