Egalitarianism in the rank aggregation problem: a new dimension for democracy

Winner selection by majority, in an election between two candidates, is the only rule compatible with democratic principles. Instead, when the candidates are three or more and the voters rank candidates in order of preference, there are no univocal criteria for the selection of the winning (consensus) ranking and the outcome is known to depend sensibly on the adopted rule. Building upon XVIII century Condorcet theory, whose idea was to maximize total voter satisfaction, we propose here the addition of a new basic principle (dimension) to guide the selection: satisfaction should be distributed among voters as equally as possible. With this new criterion we identify an optimal set of rankings. They range from the Condorcet solution to the one which is the most egalitarian with respect to the voters. We show that highly egalitarian rankings have the important property to be more stable with respect to fluctuations and that classical consensus rankings (Copeland, Tideman, Schulze) often turn out to be non optimal. The new dimension we have introduced provides, when used together with that of Condorcet, a clear classification of all the possible rankings. By increasing awareness in selecting a consensus ranking our method may lead to social choices which are more egalitarian compared to those achieved by presently available voting systems.Comment: 18 pages, 14 page appendix, RateIt Web Tool: http://www.sapienzaapps.it/rateit.php, RankIt Android mobile application: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sapienza.informatica.rankit. Appears in Quality & Quantity, 10 Apr 2015, Online Firs

Do Benevolent Aspects Have Room in Explaining EU Budget Receipts?

The member states have self-interested objectives and they use their voting power in the Council of Ministers (CM) to maximize their shares from the EU budget, whereas European Parliament (EP) uses its power to support benevolent objectives and equality between member states. Given the current decision procedures of the EU, EP has effective power on non-compulsory expenditure covering structural spending, but not on compulsory expenditure consisting mainly of agricultural spending. We use this fact to assess how the assumed benevolent objectives of EP turn into member states' budget receipts in a power politics based model.European integration, EU budget, voting power

Focused Power: Experimental Manifestation of the Shapley-Shubik Power Index

Experiments evaluate the fit of the Shapley-Shubik Power Index to a controlled human environment. Subjects with differing votes divide a fixed purse by majority rule in online chat rooms under supervision. Earnings serve as a measure of power. Chat rooms and processes for selecting subjects reduce or eliminate extraneous political forces, leaving logrolling as the primary political force. Initial proposals by subjects for division of the purse allow measurement of effects from focal points and transaction costs. Net results closely fit the Shapley-Shubik Power Index.Voting, Power Index, Focal Point, Shapley-Shubik, Experiment

Science and Ideology in Economic, Political, and Social Thought

This paper has two sources: One is my own research in three broad areas: business cycles, economic measurement and social choice. In all of these fields I attempted to apply the basic precepts of the scientific method as it is understood in the natural sciences. I found that my effort at using natural science methods in economics was met with little understanding and often considerable hostility. I found economics to be driven less by common sense and empirical evidence, then by various ideologies that exhibited either a political or a methodological bias, or both. This brings me to the second source: Several books have appeared recently that describe in historical terms the ideological forces that have shaped either the direct areas in which I worked, or a broader background. These books taught me that the ideological forces in the social sciences are even stronger than I imagined on the basis of my own experiences. The scientific method is the antipode to ideology. I feel that the scientific work that I have done on specific, long standing and fundamental problems in economics and political science have given me additional insights into the destructive role of ideology beyond the history of thought orientation of the works I will be discussing

Spartan Daily, March 23, 1976

Volume 66, Issue 31https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6062/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, March 23, 1976

Volume 66, Issue 31https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6062/thumbnail.jp

Solidarity in Terms of Reciprocity*

In this paper we introduce a new concept of solidarity in terms of reciprocity and characterize the set of social choice functions that are reciprocate (in both a strong and a weak sense), anonymous and efficient in a standard public good provision model when the agents have single-peaked preferences on the amount of the good provided. The resulting procedures are the well-known Generalized Condorcet Winner Solutions, and therefore, we provide an alternative characterization of that class of social choice functions based in new ethical properties regarding solidarity.Single-peaked preferences, solidarity, welfare domination under preference replacement.

A Social Choice Trade-off Between Alternative Fairness Concepts: Solidarity versus Flexibility

In this paper, we define simple measures of two properties that social choice functions may embody in different degrees in public goods environments. First, a measure of solidarity is proposed such that Thomson's (1990) replacement monotonicity property is a particular case in which the full amount of solidarity is required. Secondly, we introduce a measure of the degree of flexibility of a social choice function and prove that a trade-off in Campbell and Kelly's (1993) sense exists between both properties. More solidarity can only be achieved in exchange of less flexibility of the decision rule. When we restrict ourselves to the family of voting schemes called generalized Condorcet winner solutions, introduced by Moulin (1980), we find the exact trade-off and we can easily find the degrees of fulfillment of both properties, which amount to some generalization of the idea of ''qualified majority''.Single-peaked preferences, solidarity, welfare domination under preference replacement

2020-06-18 Agenda Book

Agenda booklet for the Board of Regents quarterly board meeting for June 18, 2020. Includes the approved meeting minutes of April 16, 2020

Spartan Daily, September 22, 2003

Volume 121, Issue 17https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/9883/thumbnail.jp