The Disunity of Unanimity
نویسنده
چکیده
Unanimity is the optimal voting rule in a world of zero transactions costs, when side payments are impossible. When side payments are available and transactions costs are zero, the voting rule is irrelevant to the ultimate outcome. In the more realistic situation where side payments are allowed but transactions costs are positive, a unanimity voting rule creates situations where the collective choice may fail a proposed measure even if all members favor the measure in principle. This evidences a disunity between unanimity rules and unanimous outcomes. Constitutional design should focus on rules leading to unanimous outcomes, as opposed to unanimity rules. JEL classification: D6, D7.
منابع مشابه
Strategic Voting over Strategic Proposals
Prior research on “strategic voting” has reached the conclusion that unanimity rule is uniquely bad: it results in destruction of information, and hence makes voters worse off. We show that this conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the issue being voted on is exogenous, i.e., independent of the voting rule used. We depart from the existing literature by endogenizing the proposal...
متن کاملNear-Unanimity Functions and Varieties of Reflexive Graphs
Let H be a graph and k ≥ 3. A near-unanimity function of arity k is a mapping g from the k-tuples over V (H) to V (H) such that g(x1, x2, . . . , xk) is adjacent to g(x ′ 1, x ′ 2, . . . , x ′ k) whenever xix ′ i ∈ E(H) for each i = 1, 2, . . . , k, and g(x1, x2, . . . , xk) = a whenever at least k − 1 of the xi’s equal a. Feder and Vardi proved that, if a graph H admits a near-unanimity functi...
متن کاملOn the (un)decidability of a Near-unanimity Term
We investigate the near-unanimity problem: given a finite algebra, decide if it has a near-unanimity term of finite arity. We prove that it is undecidable of a finite algebra if it has a partial near-unanimity term on its underlying set excluding two fixed elements. On the other hand, based on Rosenberg’s characterization of maximal clones, we present partial results towards proving the decidab...
متن کاملCoalitional unanimity versus strategy-proofness in coalition formation problems
This paper examines coalition formation problems from the viewpoint of mechanism design. We consider the case where (i) the list of feasible coalitions (those coalitions which are permitted to form) is given in advance; and (ii) each individual’s preference is a ranking over those feasible coalitions which include this individual. We are interested in requiring the mechanism to guarantee each c...
متن کاملFinitely Related Algebras in Congruence Distributive Varieties Have Near Unanimity Terms
We show that every finite, finitely related algebra in a congruence distributive variety has a near unanimity term operation. As a consequence we solve the near unanimity problem for relational structures: it is decidable whether a given finite set of relations on a finite set admits a compatible near unanimity operation. This consequence also implies that it is decidable whether a given finite...
متن کامل