Duncan Black and Lewis Carroll

Iain McLean, Alistair McMillan and Burt L. Monroe

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1995, vol. 7, issue 2, 107-123

Abstract: After evaluating the stature of Duncan Black as one of the founders of the modern theoretical study of politics, we show how frustrated Black was by the lack of recognition accorded to his work, especially in the UK. This led to considerable difficulty in getting his work published. In particular, his work on a like-minded predecessor, C. L. Dodgson (`Lewis Carroll'), remains in part unpublished. In it, Black withdraws his earlier assertion that Carroll's work on proportional representation and tennis tournaments was `trivial', in favor of detailed analysis of Carroll's contribution, which Black praises extravagantly as being one of the most important contributions ever to Political Science. We conclude by relating Carroll's theorem of 1884 on the proportionality of what is now called Single Nontransferable Vote (SNTV) to the modern literature.

Keywords: Black, Duncan; Dodgson, C. L. (Lewis Carroll); proportional representation; single nontransferable vote; Nash equilibrium (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:7:y:1995:i:2:p:107-123

DOI: 10.1177/0951692895007002001

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