Consistent Voting Systems with a Continuum of Voters

Abstract

Voting problems with a continuum of voters and finitely many alternatives are considered. The classical Arrow and Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorems are shown to persist in this model, not for single voters but for coalitions of positive size. The emphasis of the study is on strategic considerations, relaxing the nonmanipulability requirement: are there social choice functions such that for every profile of preferences there exists a strong Nash equilibrium resulting in the alternative assigned by the social choice function? Such social choice functions are called exactly and strongly consistent. The study offers an extension of the work of Peleg (1978a) and others. Specifically, a class of anonymous social choice functions with the required property is characterized through blocking coefficients of alternatives,and associated effectivity functions are studied. Finally, representation of effectivity functions by game forms having a strong Nash equilibrium is studied.public economics ;