Incorporating Reality into Social Choice

When voting on a proposal one in fact chooses between two alternatives: (i) A new hypothetical social state depicted by the proposal and (ii) the status quo (henceforth: Reality); a Yes vote favors a transition to the proposed hypothetical state, while a No vote favors Reality. Social Choice theory generalizes voting on one proposal to ranking multiple proposals; that Reality was forsaken during this generalization is, in our view, inexplicable. Here we propose to rectify this neglect and incorporate Reality into Social Choice, distinguishing Reality from hypothesis. We show that doing so: (i) Offers a natural resolution to Condorcet’s paradox; (ii) Explains what approval voters approve; (iii) Produces a simple and efficient Condorcet-consistent show-of-hands agenda; (iv) Produces democratic action plans, which start with Reality and proceed in democratically-supported transitions; and (v) Nullifies Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives and hence abdicates Arrow’s Theorem. Arrow’s theorem was taken to show that democracy, conceived as government by the will of the people, is an incoherent illusion. Incorporating Reality into Social Choice may clear this intellectual blemish on democracy and offer a coherent, simple, efficient, easy to communicate, and trustworthy path forward to democracy.

Authors

• Ehud Shapiro London School of Economics & Weizmann Institute of Science
• Nimrod Talmon Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Keywords

• Arrow’s Theorem
• Condorcet Criterion
• Iterated Approval Voting