The premiss-based approach to judgment aggregation

We investigate judgment aggregation by assuming that some formulas of the agenda are singled out as premisses, and the Independence condition (formula-wise aggregation) holds for them, though perhaps not for others. Whether premiss-based aggregation thus de…ned is non-degenerate depends on how premisses are logically connected, both among themselves and with other formulas. We identify necessary and su¢ cient conditions for dictatorship or oligarchy on the premisses, and investigate when these results extend to the whole agenda. Our theorems recover or strengthen several existing ones and are formulated for in…nite populations, an innovation of this paper. JEL identi…cation numbers: D70, D71. Keywords: Premiss-based aggregation, judgment aggregation, impossibility theorems, in…nite populations, majority voting