On the characterization of liberalism by Samet and Schmeidler

Abstract In the model of group identification, or qualification problems, Samet and Schmeidler (2003) provide two axiomatic characterizations of the ``liberal'''' decision rule (a person is socially qualified as a member of a collective if and only if he qualifies himself). They impose monotonicity, non-degeneracy, and independence axioms, which are standard in this model, together with either exclusive selfdetermination (opinions by disqualified persons about qualified persons should not matter) or affirmative self-determination (social decision on who are qualified should coincide with social decision on who should be qualifiers). ping monotonicity from the their sets of axioms, we characterize a larger family of rules that share an important feature of liberal rules, called self-dependence. Self-dependent rules make qualification decisions on a person based only on his opinion about himself and disregarding all other information. The characterizations of the liberal rule by Samet and Schmeidler (2003) are obtained as direct corollaries. Moreover, we obtain stronger results replacing the combination of monotonicity and non-degeneracy with a much milder axiom, no partial oppression, which requires that each person''s opinion about himself should be respected at least once by a social decision. We obtain these results in an extended model where an opinion about a person can be neutral (indifference).In the model of group identification, or qualification problems, Samet and Schmeidler (2003) provide two axiomatic characterizations of the ``liberal'''' decision rule (a person is socially qualified as a member of a collective if and only if he qualifies himself). They impose monotonicity, non-degeneracy, and independence axioms, which are standard in this model, together with either exclusive selfdetermination (opinions by disqualified persons about qualified persons should not matter) or affirmative self-determination (social decision on who are qualified should coincide with social decision on who should be qualifiers). ping monotonicity from the their sets of axioms, we characterize a larger family of rules that share an important feature of liberal rules, called self-dependence. Self-dependent rules make qualification decisions on a person based only on his opinion about himself and disregarding all other information. The characterizations of the liberal rule by Samet and Schmeidler (2003) are obtained as direct corollaries. Moreover, we obtain stronger results replacing the combination of monotonicity and non-degeneracy with a much milder axiom, no partial oppression, which requires that each person''s opinion about himself should be respected at least once by a social decision. We obtain these results in an extended model where an opinion about a person can be neutral (indifference). Submitted: June 03, 2008. On the characterization of liberalism by Samet and Schmeidler Biung-Ghi Ju Korea University, Department of Economics