Eric Maskin

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
 
 
 
 
The Arrow Impossibility Theorem: Where Do We Go From Here? 
 
 
 
Eric Maskin
∗ 
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Arrow Lecture 
Columbia University 
December 11, 2009 
                                                      
∗ I thank Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz for helpful comments on the oral presentation of this lecture.  The NSF 
provided research support. 1 
 
 
  Giving a lecture in honor of Kenneth Arrow would be a high point for any economist, but there 
are two additional reasons why this occasion is a special pleasure for me. 
  First, Ken Arrow was my teacher and Ph.D. advisor, and most likely I would not have become an 
economist at all, had it not been for him.  I was a math major in college and intended to continue in that 
direction until I happened to take a course of Ken’s - - not on social choice theory, but on “information 
economics.”  The course was a hodgepodge - - essentially, anything that Ken felt like talking about.  And 
it often seemed as though he decided on what to talk about on his way to the classroom (if then); the 
lectures had an improvised quality.  But they were mesmerizing, and, mainly because of that course, I 
switched to economics. 
  Second, lecturing here with Amartya Sen brings back many happy memories for me, because, a 
number of times at Harvard, he and I taught today’s subject—social choice theory—together in a graduate 
course.  It’s great to be renewing our pedagogical partnership. 
  Like Amartya, I will talk about the Arrow impossibility theorem, but I will concentrate on its 
implications for voting and elections; I will leave aside its broader implications for social welfare. 
  Now, by its very name, the impossibility theorem engenders a certain degree of pessimism: if 
something is “impossible,” it’s pretty hard to accomplish.  As applied to voting, the theorem appears to 
say there is no good election method.  Well, I will make the case that this is too strong a conclusion to 
draw; it’s overly negative.  But whether or not I persuade you of this, I want to argue that the theorem 
inspires a natural follow-up question, which oddly was not addressed until quite recently.  And I will 
discuss that question and its answer at the end of this talk. 
  Let me begin by reviewing the impossibility theorem from the standpoint of elections.  If there is 
a political office to fill, then a voting rule is a method of choosing the winner from a set of candidates 
(this set is called the ballot) on the basis of voters’ rankings of those candidates. 2 
 
  Many different voting rules have been considered in theory and practice.  Probably the most 
widely used method here in the United States is plurality rule, according to which the winner is the 
candidate who is more voters’ favorite candidate (i.e., the candidate more voters rank first) than any  
other.  Thus, if there are three candidates X, Y and Z, and 40% of the electorate like X best (i.e., 40% rank 
him first), 35% like Y best, and 25% like Z best (see table 1), then X wins because 40% is bigger than 
35% and 25% - - even though it is short of an over-all majority.  Plurality rule is the method used to elect 
Senators and Representatives in the U.S. and Members of Parliment in Britain (where it’s called “first-
past-the-post.”) 
 
 
Table 1 - - X is the plurality winner 
  Another well-known method is majority rule, which the eighteenth-century French 
mathematician and philosopher Condorcet was the first to analyze in detail.  The winner under majority 
rule is the candidate who is preferred by a majority to each other candidate.  For instance, suppose there 
are again three candidates, X, Y, and Z.  40% of voters rank X first, then Y, and then Z ; 35% rank Y first, 
then Z, and then X ; and 25% rank Z first, then Y, and then X (see Table 2).  Based on these rankings, the 
majority winner is candidate Y, because a majority of voters (35% + 25% = 60%) prefer Y to X, and a 
majority (40% + 35% = 75%) prefer Y to Z. 
 
 
 
Table 2 - - Y is the majority winner 
  Notice that plurality rule and majority rule lead to different outcomes: For the voter rankings of 
Table 2, plurality rule elects candidate X, whereas majority rule chooses Y.  This difference prompts an 
40% 35% 25%
X YZ
40% 35% 25%
X YZ
YZY
Z XX3 
 
obvious question: which outcome is “right.”  Or, put another way, which voting rule is better to use?  
Indeed, there is no reason to stop with plurality or majority rule: we can ask which among all possible 
voting rules is best. 
  Arrow provided a framework for answering these questions.  He proposed that we should first try 
to articulate what we want out of a voting rule, that is, what properties—or axioms—we want it to satisfy.  
The best voting rule will then be the one(s) that fulfill all those axioms. 
  Here are the axioms that Arrow considered.  As we will see, each is highly desirable on its own, 
but collectively they lead to impossibility.  Because I am particularly concerned with elections, I will give 
versions that are particularly suited to such contests. 
  The first is the requirement that an election be decisive, i.e., that there always be a winner and that 
there shouldn’t be more than one winner.  The second is what an economist would call the Pareto 
principle and what a political theorist might call the consensus principle: the idea that if all voters rank 
candidate X above candidate Y and X is on the ballot (so that X is actually available), then we oughtn’t 
elect Y.  The third axiom is the requirement of nondictatorship - - no voter should have the power to 
always get his way.  That is, it should not be the case that if he likes candidate X best, then X is elected, if 
he likes candidate Y best, then Y is elected, and so on.  Otherwise, that voter would be a dictator. 
  The final Arrow axiom is called independence of irrelevant alternatives, which in our election 
context could be renamed “independence of irrelevant candidates.”  Suppose that, given the voting rule 
and voters’ rankings, candidate X ends up the winner of an election.  Now look at another situation that is 
exactly the same except that some other candidate Y—who didn’t win—is no longer on the ballot.  Well, 
candidate Y is, in a sense, “irrelevant;” he didn’t win the election in the first place, and so leaving him off 
the ballot shouldn’t make any difference.  And so, the independence axiom requires that X should still win 
in this other situation. 4 
 
  I think that, put like this, independence seems pretty reasonable but its most vivid justification, 
probably comes from actual political history.  So, for example, let’s recall the U.S. presidential election of 
2000.  You may remember that in that election everything came down to Florida: if George W. Bush 
carried the state, he would become president, and the same for Al Gore.  Now, Florida—like most other 
states—uses plurality rule to determine the winner.  In the event, Bush got somewhat fewer than six 
hundred more votes than Gore.  Although this was an extraordinary slim margin in view of the nearly six 
million votes cast, it gave Bush a plurality (and thus the presidency).  And, leaving aside the accuracy of 
the totals themselves (hanging chads and the like), we might reasonably ask whether there was anything 
wrong with this outcome.  But a problem was created by a third candidate in Florida, Ralph Nader.  
Nearly one hundred thousand Floridians voted for Nader, and it is likely that, had he not been on the 
ballot, a large majority of these voters would have voted for Gore (of course, some of them might not 
have voted at all).  That means that Gore would probably not only have won, but won quite handily, if 
Nader had not run. 
  In political argot, Nader was a spoiler.  Although he got less than two percent of the vote in 
Florida—he was clearly “irrelevant” in the sense of having no chance to win himself - - he ended up 
determining the outcome of the election.  That seems highly undemocratic. 
  The independence axiom serves to rule out spoilers.  Thus, because plurality rule was quite 
spectacularly vulnerable to spoilers, we can immediately conclude that it violates independence.  Majority 
rule, by contrast, is easily seen to satisfy independence: if candidate X beats each other candidate by a 
majority, it continues to do so if one of those other candidates is dropped from the ballot. 
  Unfortunately, majority rule violates our first axiom, decisiveness - - it doesn’t always produce a 
clear-cut winner (this is a problem that Condorcet himself discussed).  To see what can go wrong, 
consider an election with three candidates X, Y, and Z, and an electorate in which 35% of the population 5 
 
rank X first, Y second, and Z third; 33% rank Y first, Z second, and X third; and 32% rank Z first, X second, 
and Y third (see table 3). 
35% 33% 32%
XYZ
YZX
Z XY
 
Table 3 - - Indecisiveness of majority rule 
Observe that Y  beats Z  by a majority (68% to 32%), and X  beats Y  by a majority (67% to 33%).  
But Z beats X  by a majority (65% to 35%)- - and so there is no candidate who beats each of the other two.  
This phenomenon is called the Condorcet paradox. 
  Interestingly, Kenneth Arrow wasn’t aware of the Condorcet paradox when he started work on 
social choice theory.  He came across it while studying how firms make choices.  In economic textbooks, 
firms choose production plans to maximize their profit.  But in reality, of course, a firm is not typically a 
unitary decision-maker; it’s owned by a group of shareholders.  And even if every shareholder wants to 
maximize profit, different shareholders might have different beliefs about which production plans will 
accomplish that.  So, there has to be a choice method—a voting rule—for selecting the actual production 
plan. 
  Ken’s first thought was to look at majority rule as the method, but soon discovered—or, rather 
rediscovered—the Condorcet paradox.  Now, he knew that majority rule had been around for a long time, 
and so assumed that his discovery couldn’t possibly be novel.  Indeed, when he wrote up the work, he 
referred to it as the “well-known” paradox of voting.  It was only after publication that readers directed 
him to Condorcet. 
  Although majority rule violates decisiveness and plurality rule violates independence, Ken felt 
that surely there must be other voting rules that satisfy all four axioms: decisiveness, consensus, 6 
 
nondictatorship, and independence.  But after trying out rule after rule, he eventually came to suspect that 
these axioms are collectively contradictory.  And that’s how the impossibility theorem was born; Ken 
showed that there is no voting rule that satisfying all four axioms. 
  Now, in fact, the nondictatorship axiom is very undemanding.  For instance, if instead of one 
voter, two voters out of the entire electorate have all the power in determining the winner, we probably 
still won’t be terribly happy with the election method, but nondictaorship will then be satisfied.  The 
(stronger) condition that we normally want in democratic societies is equal treatment of voters, the 
requirement that all voters count the same.  Equal treatment of voters is called anonymity in voting theory, 
reflecting the idea that voters’ names shouldn’t matter; only their votes should.  Indeed, just as we require 
that voters be treated equally, we ordinarily do the same for candidates too: we demand equal treatment of 
candidates (called neutrality in the voting theory literature).  But because Arrow showed that 
impossibility results from requiring decisiveness, consensus, independence, and nondictatorship, we get 
impossibility a fortiori from imposing the more demanding set of axioms: decisiveness, consensus, 
independence, equal treatment of voters, and equal treatment of candidates. 
  The impossibility theorem has been the source of much gloom because, individually, each of 
these five axioms seems so compelling.  But, as I suggested in my opening remarks, there is a sense in 
which the theorem overstates the negative case.  Specifically, it insists that a voting rule satisfy the five 
axioms whatever voters’ rankings turn out to be.  Yet, in practice, some rankings may not be terribly 
likely to occur.  And if that’s the case, then perhaps we shouldn’t worry too much if the voting rule fails 
to satisfy all the axioms for those improbable rankings. 
  For an example, let’s go back to the U.S. presidential election of 2000.  The three candidates of 
note were Bush, Gore, and Nader.  Now, many people ranked Bush first.  But the available evidence 
suggests that few of these voters ranked Nader second.  Similarly, a small but significant fraction of 
voters placed Nader first.  But Nader aficionados were very unlikely to rank Bush second. 7 
 
  Indeed, there is a good reason why the rankings 
Bush   Nader 
Nader     or  Bush 
Gore   Gore 
appeared to be so rare.  In ideological terms, Nader was the left-wing candidate, Bush was the right-wing 
candidate, and Gore was somewhere in between.  So, if you liked Bush’s proposed policies, you were 
likely to revile Nader’s, and vice versa. 
  Yet, if we can rule out the two rankings above (or, at least, assign them low enough probability), 
then it turns out that majority rule is decisive - - it always results in a clear-cut winner.  That is, majority 
rule satisfies all five axioms—decisiveness, consensus, no spoilers, and the two equal treatment 
properties—when rankings are restricted to rule out the rankings Bush/Nader/Gore and Nader/Bush/Gore. 
  That’s the sense in which the impossibility theorem is too gloomy: if rankings are restricted in an 
arguably plausible way, then the five axioms are no longer collectively inconsistent.  But regardless of 
whether you accept the plausibility of this particular restriction, the impossibility theorem prompts a 
natural follow-up question: Given that no voting rule satisfies the five axioms all the time, which rule 
satisfies them most often?  In other words, if we can’t achieve the ideal, which voting rule gets us closest 
to that ideal and maximizes the chance that the properties we want are satisfied? 
  Perhaps, surprisingly, this question wasn’t posed in the literature until many years after the 
publication of Social Choice and Individual Values.
1  In an effort to provide an answer, let me say that a 
voting rule works well if, for a particular restricted class of rankings, it satisfies the five axioms whenever 
voters’ rankings adhere to the restriction.  So, for example, majority rule works well in the U.S. 
presidential election example if rankings are restricted to exclude the two rankings Bush/Nader/Gore and 
                                                      
1 See E. Maskin, “Majority Rule, Social Welfare Functions, and Games Forms,” in K. Basu, P. Pattanaik, and K. 
Suzumura (eds.), Choice, Welfare, and Development (essays in honor of Amartya Sen), Oxford University Press, 
1995, pp.100-109 , and P. Dasgupta and E. Maskin, “On the Robustness of Majority Rule,” Journal of the European 
Economic Association, 2008, pp. 949-973. 8 
 
Nader/Bush/Gore.  The goal then becomes to find the voting rule that works well for as many different 
restricted classes of rankings as possible. 
  It turns out that there is a sharp answer to this problem, provided by a “domination theorem.”
2  
The theorem can be expressed as follows.  Take any voting rule that differs from majority rule, and 
suppose that it works well for a particular class of rankings.  Then, majority rule must also work well for 
that class.  Furthermore, there must be some other class of rankings for which majority rule works well 
and the voting method we started with does not.  In other words, majority rule dominates every other 
voter rule: whenever another voting rule works well, majority rule must work well too, and there will be 
cases where majority rule works well and the other voting rule does not. 
  I noted before that Kenneth Arrow himself began with majority rule when he set off on his 
examination of social choice theory.  He was soon led to consider many other possible voting rules too.  
But it turns out that, using the criteria he laid out, there’s a sense in which we can’t do better than 
majority rule after all. 
                                                      
2 See the Dasgupta-Maskin article. 

The Arrow Impossibility Theorem: Where Do We Go From Here?

http://www.sss.ias.edu/files/papers/econpaper93.pdf

The Arrow Impossibility Theorem: Where Do We Go From Here?

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