A general concept of majority rule

We develop a general concept of majority rule for finitely many choice alternatives that is consistent with arbitrary binary preference relations, real-valued utility functions, probability distributions over binary preference relations, and random utility representations. The underlying framework is applicable to virtually any type of choice, rating, or ranking data, not just the linear orders or paired comparisons assumed by classic majority rule social welfare functions. Our general definition of majority rule for arbitrary binary relations contains the standard definition for linear orders as a special case.  2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.