Measurement of consensus with a reference

Abstract

In this work we contribute to the formal analysis of the measurement of consensus in a society. Instead of approaching the topic from an absolute perspective we are concerned with a practical application: the proposal of a decision mechanism with respect to which consensus is measured. Surprisingly this produces a powerful unifying model, a restriction of which is deeply analysed. We also study the axiomatic properties of particular expressions for consensus with various salient social rules as a reference.Consensus; coherence; measurement; Borda rule; Copeland rule