Connecting and Resolving Sen's and Arrow's Theorems

Abstract

As shown, the source of Sen's and Arrow's impossibility theorems is that Sen's Liberal condition and Arrow's IIA counter the critical assumption that voters' have transitive preferences. As this allows transitive and certain cyclic preferences to become indistinguishable, the Pareto condition forces cycles. Once the common cause of these perplexing conclusions is understood, resolutions are immediate.