deliberation and voting in contemporary democratic theory
TRANSCRIPT
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Deliberation and Voting in Contemporary Democratic Theory
by
Benjamin T. Sirolly
A Proposal Submitted to the Honors Council
For Honors in Political Science
April 13, 2007
Approved by:
____________________________
Adviser: Professor James (Political Science)
____________________________
Reader: Professor Magee (Economics)
____________________________
Honors Council Representative: Professor Groff (Philosophy)
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Table of Contents
TABLE OF FIGURES ................................................................................ IV
ABSTRACT....................................................................................................V
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...............................................................1
1.1DISCUSSING THEGOOD GOVERNMENT.................................................................................................11.2PLAN FOR THE THESIS ..........................................................................................................................5
CHAPTER 2: COMMUNICATIVE ACTION AND DELIBERATIVEDEMOCRACY ..............................................................................................8
2.1INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................82.2COMMUNICATIVEACTION ANDDELIBERATIVEDEMOCRACY THROUGHJRGENHABERMAS..............9
2.2.1: Communicative Action .............................................................................................................102.2.2 Discourse and Democracy .........................................................................................................142.2.3 The Two-Track Model of Politics and Society ..........................................................................20
2.3DELIBERATIVEDEMOCRACY:AREVIEW OF THELITERATURE ..........................................................242.3.1 Deliberation and Fairness .........................................................................................................25
2.4MODERNCHALLENGES ANDAGGREGATIVE SOLUTIONS ....................................................................28
CHAPTER 3: AGGREGATIVE VOTING ..............................................30
3.1INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................303.2DEMOCRATICVOTING AND THEAGGREGATION OFPREFERENCES ....................................................303.3THEPARADOX OF VOTING ..................................................................................................................323.4INTRANSITIVITY AND VOTING:ARROW'SPOSSIBILITYTHEOREM.......................................................333.5THEENDS ANDMEANS OFDEMOCRACY:ASTUDY OFRIKER ............................................................413.6ADELIBERATIVEPERSPECTIVE ONSTRATEGY ANDMANIPULATION INVOTING................................51
CHAPTER 4: THE PROBLEMS OF AGGREGATING VOTES AND
DELIBERATION ........................................................................................60
4.1INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................604.2THEPROBABILITY OFCYCLES ............................................................................................................604.3DELIBERATION ANDINTRANSITIVITY..................................................................................................61
4.3.1 Unanimity...................................................................................................................................624.3.2 Single-Peakedness......................................................................................................................66
4.4DELIBERATION AND SINGLEPEAKEDNESS .........................................................................................70
CHAPTER 5: DELIBERATION AND VOTING....................................83
5.1INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................835.2THE CONCEPTION OF ALEGITIMATEPOLITICALDELIBERATION.......................................................83
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5.3PSYCHOLOGY OFDELIBERATION........................................................................................................855.3.1 Social Forces at Work: Polarization and Silencing of the Numerical Minority......................865.3.2 Unanimity versus Majority Rule................................................................................................89
5.4DECISIONRULES IN ADELIBERATIVEDEMOCRACY...........................................................................91
5.5THEPUBLICDELIBERATION ANDPRIVATE VOTING ...........................................................................915.6THEROLE OF VOTING IN ADELIBERATIVEDEMOCRACY...................................................................985.7DELIBERATIVEDEMOCRACY AND VOTING:RECONCILED...................................................................99
ENDNOTES............................................................................................... 102
BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................................................... 109
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Table of Figures
FIGURE 1:SINGLE-PEAKED PREFERENCES .....................................................67
FIGURE 2:THE PARADOX OF VOTING:NON-SINGLE-PEAKED.........................69
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Abstract
Deliberative Democracy claims that democratic legitimacy is tied to a deliberation
oriented at consensus. For the theory to have applicability in a modern context, it must
somehow accommodate John Rawls has called the fact of pluralism.1
If consensus is
not a feasible goal, the question arises whether the aims of voting and deliberation are
reconcilable. I argue that because deliberative democracy requires only that citizens have
an orientation towards consensus, majority rule voting is not necessarily a competing
force to deliberation. Furthermore, I argue that voting and deliberation are mutually
supportive and necessary in the pursuit of the deliberative ideal. This is due to the fact
that together voting and deliberation allow for the actualization and harmonization of the
two components of the deliberative citizen, the public and private. Voting and
deliberation are therefore reconcilable.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Discussing the Good Government
What is a good government? What makes a government legitimate? The
contemporary answer to this age old question is, 'a democratic one.' One might charge
that a government is legitimate when its mantra is of the people, by the people, for the
people.1
But unfortunately, the answer to the question of what makes a good
government is far from simple. When thinking about the ideal form of government the
non-ideal real world must be considered. The institutions of government as well as the
socio-psychological effect of those institutions on the citizens are important to recognize.
The philosophical groundings of the government must be deeply connected with real
world institutions and practices. All the while, the government must remain loyal to its
citizens and to the mantra of the people, by the people, for the people.
The most promising contemporary solution for what a good government would
look like is called deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy, a term only first
used in the 1980s2, is in its simplest form exactly what it sounds like, a political system
where deliberation is the foundation and the most central piece of the democracy.
Deliberative democracy theorists vary, sometimes greatly, on their description of what
this democracy would look like, but a few key features tie each of the theorists together.
First and foremost, deliberation is the most important and essential type of participation
for a citizen of the democracy. At its most basic, the deliberation is a discussion by equal
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citizens making a common political decision by trying to come to some consensus or
agreement. This process of deliberation brings the affected together to be a part of a
common decision, and in doing so, deliberation creates in them a sense of agency and self
governance and forces those individuals to justify their beliefs to others. This process of
individuals entering the political realm both legitimizes the government through popular
support and at the same time creates a sense of shared value and life between citizens.
One of the largest questions in deliberative democracy is how exactly political
decisions will be made. Jon Elster's early account of an ideal deliberative democracy
claimed that, there would not be any need for an aggregating mechanism, since a
rational discussion would tend to produce unanimous preferences.3
His reference to an
aggregating mechanism is a general way of referring to any particular way of adding up
votes to determine a majority choice. Elster's claim is almost certainly too strong for any
large scale, modern, plural democracy. When millions of individuals from heterogeneous
backgrounds are asked to a make a collective decision, there is likely to be nothingthat
the group can decide on of practical importance to a political system. Even if consensus
could be found at some time in the infinite future, political questions are generally time
dependent and a unanimity requirement could prevent any timely reactions. So then if
unanimity cannot be expected because of the constraints of time and scale in a large,
modern, plural democracy, then there must be some other way of making the important
and contentious decisions. The (nearly unanimous) choice of deliberative democracy
theorists for this task is decision through a majority wins vote. Their perspective is that,
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if unanimity cannot be reached and a decision must be made, then a vote is needed as a
method of last resort. If voting is a inescapable piece of a deliberative democracy, then
two questions arise. First, can the aggregation of votes accurately describe and depict the
outcomes of political deliberation, and secondly is voting normatively and
psychologically at odds with deliberation?
Whether voting can accurately aggregate votes to determine the majority will has
long been the topic of study for a field of political science called Social Choice Theory.
These theorists have proven that there is no sure-fire way to add up votes that will always
be fair and logical. Some problems inherent to the aggregation of votes are that any
system of voting is open to manipulation by its voters, that the addition of votes can lead
to illogical and thus meaningless outcomes (for example, candidate A beats candidate B
who beats candidate C, but candidate C can also beat candidate A, or A>B>C>A), and
that the winner of a vote can sometimes be determined solely on the choice of the method
of adding up votes.
Even if voting can mathematically represent, and thus be in part reconciled with
deliberation, the further question arises whether voting is fundamentally in conflict with
deliberation's normative and psychological aims. Deliberation is a public act which
aspires to hold people accountable for their statements and beliefs through continuous
public discussion whereas voting is a private act which requires no debate and within
which the voters are accountable only to themselves. Even the way that we think of the
two processes is inherently different. Deliberation is a process that encourages, and
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sometimes demands, cooperation and compromise where voting is thought of generally
as a strategic process where the more powerful political factions jockey and fight for
those few independent or 'swing' voters in order to garner the desired level of support,
generally 51 percent. The two processes of deliberation and voting seem to push the
political spectrum in two entirely different directions, one towards cooperation, and the
other toward strategy. It is no wonder then that deliberative democracy theorists shy
away from voting, and only call on it when absolutely necessary.
My question is this: Can deliberation and voting exist together without harming one
another, and if they can, is aggregation able to represent the outcomes of a deliberation
properly?
What I will show in this thesis is that deliberation and voting are reconcilable in
their processes and aims, normatively and socio-psychologically. Not only are these two
processes able to exist together, I show that their co-existence is symbiotic. Where
deliberation has faults, voting is able to compensate and where aggregation has been
shown to be meaningless, deliberation gives it meaning. Within the context of one
another, voting and deliberation are strengthened, rather than weakened.
This result is important for both fields of Social Choice Theory and Deliberative
Democracy. For the Social Choice Theorists, my results give reason to the mathematical
findings. I show that the problems of aggregation do not occur when the act of voting
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represents an actual social choice. For the Deliberative Democrats, my work refocuses
deliberative democracy and challenges them to think of voting of an essentialpart (rather
than a method of last resort) of the deliberative process. I believe that, if further
developed, this shift will be fruitful for the field of deliberative democracy by clarifying
many of the current institutional problems as well as offering new and powerful avenues
of approach to understanding deliberation. These are of course, my hopes. For the
present, the work is an exposition of the interplay of deliberation and voting, one that I
hope clarifies the problem and presents a viable solution.
1.2 Plan for the Thesis
Chapter two is an exposition of deliberative democracy, largely based on the work
of Jrgen Habermas. Habermas, best described as a German socio-political philosopher
laid much of the groundwork for the theory of deliberative democracy in his 1995 work
Between Facts and Norms. Beginning with deliberative democracy's historical and
philosophical place in political theory, I will then move on to focus on the processes of
deliberation and the institutional aspects of a deliberative democracy that most directly
pertain to the voting. I will then present a few divergent viewpoints on the substance and
processes of deliberation in order to give a more complete view of the current
understanding of a deliberative democracy. Finally, I will present some of the challenges
to deliberation from other fields as well as from a few deliberative democrats.
The third chapter will focus on the problems associated with aggregating votes.
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This chapter will be built largely around two thinkers, Kenneth Arrow and William H.
Riker. Arrow determines that any logically arranged system of voting can output an
illogical result and Riker then shows that any fair system of voting, being vulnerable to
Arrow's result, is also vulnerable to strategic manipulation by the voters as well as an
agenda setter. The third chapter will build these two results up so that the reader
unfamiliar to social choice theory can fully understand the power and extent of their
findings.
The fourth chapter analyzes social choice theory in both its real world significance
as well as its interaction with deliberation and deliberative democracy. The discussion on
the real world significance of voting largely comes from Gerry Mackie's work
Democracy Defended. His work is a long warranted study of the prevalence of the
problems of social choice in real democracies. I then take the results of his work and,
with the guidance of a few deliberative democrats, show how deliberation can account for
many of Mackie's results and then argue that greater movement towards a deliberative
democracy would further reduce the problems presented by social choice theorists.
Chapter five is my analysis of the normative as well as psychological conflicts
between voting and deliberation. Beginning with recent psychological findings on
deliberation and voting, I argue that these findings show a need for both deliberation and
voting in concert. This analysis hinges on the idea that in our decision making processes,
we need both public and private experiences and interactions to fully experience the
deliberative effects. I will argue that voting is a much needed moment of private
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sincerity within the larger context of the public deliberation. I continue this argument
through to the normative end of deliberation and voting, arguing that a private vote is
necessary for an effective public deliberation. Through this analysis, I will show that
deliberative democrats' expressed desires for deliberation are actually better met when
voting is an integral part of the deliberative process.
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Chapter 2: Communicative Action and Deliberative Democracy
2.1 Introduction
Deliberative democracy is a rich theory of politics which attempts to construct, or
perhaps reconstruct, a modern theory of a good, just, and legitimate government. In
contrast to classic theories of direct and representative democracy that emphasize the
importance of individual sovereignty actualized through voting or assent to a social
contract, deliberative democracy grounds the political lawmaking process in political
discussions. The generally accepted and common conception of deliberative democracy1
contends that the nature of the discussions of proposal and institutionalization of law
ground that law's legitimacy. In other words, when a deliberation can ideally find
consensus, it creates inherently legitimate legislation.
I will begin this chapter with an exposition of the basic structure of deliberative
democracy, as it has been presented by the German, socio-political philosopher, Jrgen
Habermas. His work has in large part defined and shaped the current deliberative
democracy theory. Even those thinkers who have presented independent conceptions of
deliberative democracy confess their indebtedness to Habermas and his ideas of
communicative action.2
Thus my explanations and discussions of deliberative
democracy will begin with his ideas on communicative action, move to communicative
actions place in a discourse theory of law and democracy in terms of legitimacy, and
finally discuss the implementation of such a theory in a modern, plural society.
Then the focus will shift to a few competing conceptions of what a deliberative
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democracy might look like. These thinkers both add substance and some depth to
Habermass theory by offering a few real world consequences of deliberation as well as a
few philosophical points not in Habermass works.
2.2 Communicative Action and Deliberative Democracy through Jrgen Habermas3
Prior to Habermas, there were generally two paradigms of explanation for social
action, one for economists, the other sociologists. Economic theorists generally used
strategic behavior or instrumental rationality to describe social action, which accounts for
action in a fairly Hobbesian sense4
in that each individuals actions can be entirely
understood in terms of the pursuit of self interest. The economic understanding of
instrumental rationality essentially removes all meaning from laws and social norms
because individuals would only follow those norms and laws when it was to their
individual benefit. Sociologists, in contrast, largely explained social action in terms of
irrational acts, such as habituation and culturally-specific socialization5
which led
individuals to act with no instrumental goal or end purpose in mind.6
In this paradigm,
sociologists explain actions in accordance with social norms through irrational tendencies
of social compliance.
Communicative action is Habermas's sociological reconstruction of how and why
individuals can rationally follow social norms, where he finds a middle ground between
instrumental rationality and irrational normative action. Habermas believes that there is
one, unified rationality to all social action that is justifiable across all modern cultures.
Below I will describe Habermas's conception of how this social rationality is developed
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and at the center of our social norms.
What makes social rationality possible is the use of ordinary language. Language,
used in communication, requires our utterances and thoughts to be publicly accessible
in order for us to share them at all.7
Because language allows for a shared understanding
of propositions pertaining to social norms, we are able to justify those norms to each
other. The rationality, or validity, of a social norm is then justifiable through discussion
because of the common foundation of reference provided by language.8
This procedure
of justification is what Habermas calls communicative action.
2.2.1: Communicative Action
Communicative action occurs when individuals attempt to reach agreement in
order to coordinate their actions.9
Action coordination occurs in a range of processes
from the simple, such as a family coming together to build a shelf, to the complex, where
a nation creates a national defense system. In both of these cases, there is a problem of
action coordination, and because the actors need the cooperation of all involved in order
for the project to be successful, they must attempt to reach some consensus over how that
project will be completed. Habermas argues that whenever a group of individuals
attempts to reach a consensus through communication they unavoidably act under certain
presuppositions, or follow a few guidelines though often unspoken, that are necessary to
their pursuit of a consensus.1
1 The contention that the guidelines are natural and necessary is not universally accepted by deliberative
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The presuppositions to a discursive process aimed at action coordination, as given
by Habermas are that, the participants must assume, among other things, that they (a)
pursue their illocutionary goals without reservations, that they (b) tie their agreement to
the intersubjective recognition of criticizable validity claims, and that they (c) are ready
to take on the obligations resulting from consensus and relevant for further interaction.10
Taken together, these three presuppositions set the stage for individuals to enter into a
communicative discourse with the capacity of producing societal norms.
The first presupposition (a) of communicative action simply requires that
participants not hold back in their arguments aimed at convincing the other parties. In
other words, the arguments should not be constrained due to reservations about the
possible consequences of those arguments. One must not feel pressure or fear or any
other force against their entering their own ideas and desires into the conversation. This
ensures that no arguments are precluded and similarly that nothing is left unsaid. If
something were to be left unsaid by a participant, that participant would most likely be
unable to accept the final agreement fully, without reservation.
The second condition (b) is that individuals tie their agreement to intersubjective
recognition of criticizable validity claims. Claims to validity are a speaker's method of
presenting claims to truth that can only be justified socially.11
Validity claims [pertain]
to action norms and all the general normative propositions that express the meaning of
democratic theorists. However, many of the same theorists who disagree with the idea that the
guidelines are not unavoidable do agree with the content of the rules. The debate between these
thinkers and Habermas asks whether these rules of debate must be codified and enforced to ensure
proper outcomes. I leave this question open.
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such norms.12
These are claims that are discussed and agreed to (or not) within a real
discourse between real individuals. Validity claims' success and failure depends solely
upon the rationally motivated agreement of the participants of the debate. In other
words, validity claims are accepted or not by the force of the better argument, and thus
are normative because of their social acceptance.
The set of presuppositions that make consensus possible necessarily create an
intersubjectivity which allows for the recognition and challenging of validity claims.
This process of creating an intersubjective perspective ideally includes [ascribing]
identical meanings to expressions, [connecting] utterances with validity claims, and
[assuming] that addressees are accountable, that is autonomous and sincere, with both
themselves and others.13
Through these three idealizations the participants form the
intersubjective perspective, which builds a linguistic foundation through ordinary
language use. This linguistic foundation allows participants to directly and cooperatively
discuss any social norm in a meaningful way that allows for mutually understood
argumentation and eventually consensus.
The final rule of discourse, (c) that an individual must be ready to take on the
obligations resulting from consensus,14
guarantees that the agreements made in the
communication are carried through. Whereas a verbal agreement might rest only on a
principled, philosophical argument, agreement formed in communicative action must be
carried out in the lives of the agreeing participants. The norms created through
communicative action are binding and internally codified, rather than externally enforced.
In this way, the results of communicative action are like a moral code, where the
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motivation for compliance is an internalduty.
Communicative action seems to gives a more complete, human, picture of the
motivations and construction of societal norms in that it allows for the following of social
norms not only because they are there, or that strategic rationality dictates that we do so,
but rather because of a personal agreement founded in a process of fair discussion in
which anyone affected can take part. Habermas's insight is that our social lives do have a
sense of rationality to them, in that our normative actions are rational because of the
context of deriving those norms.
In order to clarify what constitutes a valid norm derived from communicative
action, Habermas presents a discourse principle:
Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree asparticipants in rational discourses.
15
In the discourse principle, Habermas essentially reformulates the Kantian categorical
imperative replacing Kant's internal process of moral justification16
with a public process
of deliberation between individuals. In a way, the processes of discourse require
individuals to exist in a Kingdom of Ends where the need for each individual's consent
ensures that everyone's autonomy is fully respected. Furthermore, the ability for a
normative rule to be generalized is found in both Kant and Habermas, except that
Habermas requires actual deliberative testing of the generalizability of a norm. In sum,
the process of communicative action, or deliberative discussion aimed at consensus on
problems of action coordination is meant to generate valid norms to which every member
affected could agree.17
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2.2.2 Discourse and Democracy
As discussed above, Habermas argues that processes of deliberation aimed at
consensus are naturally shaped by the unavoidable presuppositions of communicative
action. These presuppositions will, and in fact must, occur in the ideal discourse
situation. However, because the political world is far from ideal, deliberation must be
somehow modified in order to take into account the unavoidable social and political facts
in the legislative process of democracy. Democratically generated laws are a distinct
subset of discursively generated norms, but they are not one in the same. This is because
deliberative democracy requires no preconceived societal ethic, but instead, a discourse-
theoretic interpretation insists on the fact that democratic will-formation draws its
legitimating force not from a previous convergence of settled ethical convictions but both
from the communicative presuppositions that allow the better arguments to come into
play in various forms of deliberation and from the procedures that secure fair bargaining
processes.18
At the same time those modified procedures must maintain a deep
connection to the processes of communicative action in order to maintain a connection to
normative legitimacy.
Our next step, then, is to determine where the discourse principle fits within the
processes of democratic legislation and governance. Deliberative democracy is the
application of the discourse principle to the political and legal system, institutionalizing
discourse within a system of government created to enable the creation, and enforcement
of law.
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To better define the process of legitimacy behind deliberative democracy,
Habermas introduces the principle of democracy to establish a procedure of legitimate
lawmaking
19
. The principle of democracy is:
that only those statutes may claim legitimacy that can meet with the assent ofall citizens
in a discursive process of legislation that in turn has been legally constituted.20
The democratic principle both draws on and departs from the discourse principle. On one
hand, democratic legislation must be grounded in communicative action through
discursive processes in order to be legitimate. On the other, the historical and societal
nature of law requires a reformulation of that principle.
The nature of law is due to its specific role in society throughout history, and thus
the constraints on the discourse principle are not particularly normative, but historical.21
The story of law, as told by Habermas, begins in the traditional society, where individuals
interacted on a regular basis. Due to this regular interaction, the subjects recognized each
other as irreplaceable members of a concrete community. Furthermore, this daily
interaction allowed a moral tradition to be generated and sustained through
communicative action. A primitive society would be composed of individuals who all
followed fairly similar, not very specialized roles, and each of these individuals would be
working under a similar moral system. However, as the society became increasingly
compartmentalized and specialized, the legal form became necessary to offset deficits
arising with the collapse of traditional ethical life.22
This collapse, due to the
stratification and compartmentalization of society, meant that legal norms had to
regulate interpersonal relationships and conflicts between actors who recognize one
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another in an abstract community first produced by the legal norms themselves.23
In a modern society, where the traditional ethical construction has lost its
foothold, the society is composed of actors who interact sparsely or not at all. Problems
of action coordination arise between these actors that cannot be feasibly solved by
traditional discursive methods. Here law must fill in the gap between individuals,
creating both a language for interaction as well as a set of rules for that interaction. In
order for markets, businesses, specialization, and modern commerce in general to come
into being, law is necessary to artificially create communal standards to allow these
disciplines and structures to function and exist.24
The nature of law must differ further from morality in that law pertains only to
external relationships, rather than internal kinds of motivation.25
Because of the lack of
everyday communicative interaction between the parties involved, which would have
created the intersubjective perspective in a normal discursive process thereby enabling
norms to be generated, law is not an internally motivated moral choice but rather a choice
of rule conformation. Furthermore, because law serves the function of intermediary
between individuals who do not often interact, law asks only that the participants can
imagine themselves as typical members of a legally constituted community. This nature
of the law, which guides the outcomes of the democratic principle, distinguishes moral
norms from the norms created from the democratic principle insofar as the moral
principle generates an internally constituted rule set whereas the democratic principle
refers to the level at which interpenetrating forms of argumentation are externally
institutionalized.26
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Thus law, Habermas argues, must play a dual role, in that it must adhere to the
burdens imparted by its social role and at the same time maintain its connection to
normative claims;
27
law must both address local actors in particular situations as well as
tie its precepts to universalizable validity claims; law is inherently enforced coercively,
yet the individuals under coercive enforcement must see themselves as the authors of that
law. Law is split between these competing claims of the facts of social reality and the
normative ties that give legitimacy to the law. The generation of law must maintain a
connection to, but take a step away from, the ideal considerations of the discourse
situation. Where this step leads is into the democratic principle, a less ideal, more
flexible standard of legitimacy for law and democracy.
In general, the democratic principle should institutionalize the communicative
framework for a rational political will-formation, and it should ensure that will-formation
can express itself as the common will of freely associated legal persons.28
Unfortunately, because legally binding arguments are not ideal, due to their inclusion of
strategic bargaining and compromise procedures, the universal presuppositions of
argumentation can only be approximately fulfilled.29
Ideally, the procedure of
communicative action would be institutionalized as the discursive political process,
however social and political facts of argumentation prevent this idealization from being
realized. Thus the hope of deliberative democracy is to approximate the ideal outcomes
of communicative action through institutions of government and law that can guide the
pre-existing social and political complexity towards a more ideal, communicative
structure of decision making.
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Furthermore, the reality of politics requires careful consideration about existing
power and social structures to ensure that they do not overwhelm the ideals of the
discourse principle. Also, the discourse principle is meant to deal with disputes over
ideal and normative matters and so it is not entirely adept at addressing the temporally
limited, pragmatic, and complicated questions that arise in the political sphere.
In response, Habermas answers that the centerpiece of deliberative politics
consists in a network of discourses and bargaining processes that is supposed to facilitate
the rational solution of pragmatic, moral, and ethical questions the very problems that
accumulate with the failure of the functional, moral, and ethical integration of society
elsewhere.30
Deliberative politics must walk a fine line between maintaining a
connection to moral standards while returning decisions that meet the practical
limitations inherent in politics. In attempting to incorporate the pluralism of value
orientations in modern society, deliberative democracy cannot expect to modify these
value orientations immediately, nor can it ignore them.
Because the goal in these discourses is compromise31
rather than mutual
consensus, there must be rules of bargaining that somehow neutralize power differences
between the parties. Furthermore, the deliberative process must include methods of fair
bargaining that are not seen in the discourse principle. Habermas cautions that these
conditions of bargaining, rather than consensus seeking, will likely induce strategic
actions by the parties involved.32 Strategic action is incompatible with the outcomes of
communicative action, but deliberative democracy and the legal claims to validity are
more flexible than those of communicative action alone. In legislation generated through
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democratic political processes:
The supply of information and purposive-rational choice of means are
interwoven with the balance of interests and compromise formation; with
the achievement of ethical self understanding and preference formation;and with moral justification and tests of legal coherence. This concept is
strong enough to ground the deliberative mode of the legislative process as
a necessary condition of legitimate lawmaking, but weak enough not tolose touch with empirical theories.
In this construction of democratic lawmaking, legislative processes maintain fairness, but
at the same time incorporate social realities. Fairness is maintained, even in the face of
strategic action, insofar as the ability to bargain and have influence is given equally to all
of the participants. Then, fairness is achieved in negotiated agreements when all the
affected interests can come into play and have equal chances of prevailing.33
It may seem that the discourse principle is now almost relegated to a footnote, in
that legislative processes must move farther and farther away from consensus in order to
incorporate social reality. However, the basic ideas of fair bargaining must be founded
within moral discourses rooted in the discourse principle. Furthermore, the particular
nature of the issues at hand in legislative decision making temporally limited and non-
generalizable as moral norms determines that the discourse principle is only
supplemented but not replaced. This allows the deliberative democracy to incorporate
the non-ideal nature of the discourse. When viewed as a whole, deliberative politics is a
messy process, but even so it always maintains its connection to the original legitimating
forces of law. The processes of deliberative democracy incorporate the power structures
and social and political facts but only after their harmful affects have been largely
negated.
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2.2.3 The Two-Track Model of Politics and Society
In Habermass deliberative democracy, the question arises, who is discoursing,
and what is the context or purpose of that discourse? Habermas argues for a two track
solution, where democratically generated legislation has two components to its
generation: an institutional component of legislative procedure within the government,
and a public component where the public spheres non-institutionalized deliberative
insights provide direction for, and give legitimacy to, the institutional procedures of
government. This two track model is legitimate under two conditions, that the
institutional procedures must be open to input from the informal public sphere and that
the institutional structure is appropriately formatted to allow for the relevant types of
discourse to ensure a rational outcome. The second of these precepts has been fleshed
out in the above discussion on the democratic process and its inclusion of fair processes
of bargaining and strategic action in concert with the deeper tie to normative processes.
The first condition requires a discourse of interaction between the citizen and their
government. Before this interaction can be analyzed, the idea of citizenship must first be
clarified. In the two track model, the normative standing of the citizen is an
amalgamation of the two most commonly accepted political constructions of the citizen
originating in the theories of liberalism and republicanism.34
Liberalism views the citizen as a private person with private rights that protect
them against the government and other citizens:
As a bearer of these rights they enjoy the protection of the government, as
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long as they pursue their private interests within the boundaries drawn bylegal statutes. Political rights such as voting rights and free speech... give
citizens the opportunity to assert their private interests in such a way that
by means of elections, the composition of parliamentary bodies, and the
formation of government, these interests are finally aggregated into apolitical will that makes an impact on the administration.35
The liberal view of politics in general views politics as the interaction of a number of
private individuals. If there is no coherent public sentiment, than a subjugation of the
minority is possible because through greed or treating individuals as a means rather than
an end. Perhaps the treatment of individuals as private citizens then brings liberals to
their common fear of a tyranny of the majority, where minority groups are subjugated
to the will of a majority within the society, and thus human rights must be codified to
protect these minorities.
A deliberative democracy pushes past the view of citizens as entirely private. The
very nature of communicative discourse requires a sense of political commonality and
cooperation. When individuals form their will and opinions in a public, deliberative,
setting, they no longer can be said to hold entirely private interests. Instead, their
interests and preferences are those that are defensible in deliberation.
In contrast to liberalism, civic republicanism views the public processes of
politics and political deliberation to be constitutive for the processes of society as a
whole.36
Society, and thus the lives of those within it, is centered about politics.
Rights are not negative, but are positive liberties which guarantee the possibility of
participation in a common praxis, through the exercise of which citizens can first make
themselves into what they want to be - political autonomous authors of a community of
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free and equal persons.37
The problem of the republican approach is that it has a
communitarian tendency, in that it attempts to create an ethical construction of political
discourse.
38
As previously noted, modern politics cannot be founded upon on one
common societal ethic.
Because of the legal systems grounding through the discourse principle, legal
persons -or those subject to, and authors of, the law- must be defined as bearers of rights.
These rights can come in two general genres, popular sovereignty and human rights is the
right to self-rule. Civic republicans argue that the right to popular sovereignty is at the
heart of political organization, and that any system of rights is only an extension of the
specific ideals of each community. The second general genre of rights that legal persons
may claim is that of human rights. Popular sovereignty and human rights have often been
thought to be at odds with one another, due to the fact that rights limit the bounds of
popular sovereignty and their foundations are at odds-one founded in liberalism, the other
republicanism. However, Habermas argues that these two types of rights are not in
conflict, but instead work in concert to allow citizens the freedom and ability to exercise
their political autonomy.39
That the two types of rights work in concert is due to the deliberative founding of
those rights within the idea of political autonomy. The exercise of political autonomy, in
concert with the democratic principle requires that the communicative processes of will
and action formation that compose the discourse principle are controlling legislation.
Therefore, individuals must be able both to participate fully in the process of discourse as
well as freely form their own opinions and conclusions. To deny either of these would be
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to undercut the process of communicative action, and thus the legitimacy of the
legislation. Neither popular sovereignty nor human rights can be placed above the other.
Or, human rights are necessary to ensure that popular sovereignty is accessible through
communicative action. In this construction, both human rights and popular sovereignty
are intrinsically inseparable.
The two-track model of discursive politics denies both that democracy can be
legitimate without some public orientation and that society is constituted and centered
about politics. First, if the theory of communicative action and the discourse principle is
at the center of legitimacy, citizens must be somehow publicly oriented toward mutual
cooperation and understanding. Second, political questions are not questions about
shared moral and ethical life, and so society cannot be wholly centered around politics.
[These] two views would exhaust the alternatives only if we hat to conceive of the state
and society in terms of the whole and its parts. To the discourse theory of democracy
corresponds, however, the image of a decentered society.40
Political power flows not from one origin, but from two tracks, the
institutionalized legislative government and the civil society, or public sphere. The
institutions of government are charged with focusing the numerous conversations and
non-institutionalized deliberations in the public sphere into a coherent legislation. This is
because communicative power and influence generated in the public sphere are
transformed into 'administrative power' through legislation.41 The discourses in the
public sphere serve to direct, through political elections and activism, and legitimate the
actions of the institutions of governance.
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There is essentially a balance of power between the public sphere and the
government, mediated by the precepts of a constitution. The constitution ensures that the
government must take account the discourses of the public sphere while at the same time
the public sphere is unable to legislate independent of the government. This method
allows social complexity to be preserved and recognizes the impossibility of a society-
wide discussion, but at the same time brings the multiplicity of deliberative results into
play in the opinion and will formation leading up to legislation.
In sum, Habermas's conception of deliberative democracy is rich and deep. He
founds democratic legitimacy in the discourses of citizens attempting to live together in
society and the connection of the outcome of those discourses to democracy and law.
Habermas is understandably not alone in describing what a deliberative democracy might
look like, and in order to add some depth and breadth to the picture I will now review
some of the most important components of a deliberative democracy through the work of
some of these contemporary thinkers.
2.3 Deliberative Democracy: A Review of the Literature
A full review of the literature on deliberative democracy is far outside of the
scope of this paper. What I offer here is a sample of the literature on what constitutes a
fair and legitimate deliberation. Because the concern of this paper is whether voting and
deliberation can be reconciled, the following will be an exposition of what constitutes a
fair and legitimate deliberation. Because deliberation, rather than voting, is the central
key to legitimacy of democracy, voting must mesh with deliberative standards, instead of
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the reverse. Therefore, it is imperative to have a clear picture of the fair and legitimate
deliberation in mind before voting is addressed at all.
2.3.1 Deliberation and Fairness
Amy Guntman and Dennis Thompson, in their work Why Deliberative
Democracy, suggest that the precepts and principles of deliberative democracy are
centered around one idea: reciprocity.42
They explain that, the basic premise of
reciprocity is that citizens owe one another justifications for the institutions, laws and
public policies that bind them.43
Insofar as this is true, reciprocity is the driving force
behind our actions oriented at consensus in deliberation. Through pursuing reciprocity
we pursue an ongoing activity of deliberation which includes mutual reason-giving,
punctuated by collectively binding decisions.44
Out of the principle of reciprocity flows the idea of the economy of mutual
respect. The economy of mutual respect calls on individuals to look for points of
convergence of argument.45
Mutual respect requires that, when political opponents seek
to economize on their disagreements, they continue to search for fair terms of social
cooperation even in the face of their fundamental (and often foundational)
disagreements.46
Taken together, reciprocity and mutual respect are the driving force
behind a fair and legitimate deliberation.
Deliberators acting with mutual respect and a sense of reciprocity could almost
certainly be described as acting communicatively. When we must defend our arguments
and listen to others (reciprocity), and do so in order to find consensus (mutual respect),
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we have in many ways recreated the original conditions that are necessary for ideal
deliberation about matters of action coordination. In attempting to coordinate our actions
with another, we have already come to the realization that we require the unforced
consent of the other. In realizing this, we must respect their ideas and justify our own if
we hope to come to consensus at all. Thus, Guntman and Tompson provide a new
perspective on communicative action in giving more concrete terms to Habermas's
presuppositions of communicative action.
In his work on issue processing, David Braybrooke provides an apt description of
a real, yet fair, deliberative process:
In what we might define as logically complete debate, the
participants, turn by turn, raise proposals and invoke arguments for them,
and the other participants deal with all the proposals and answer all thearguments not their own; thus as the issue moves toward resolution,
every participant is aware at every stage of every ingredient still current
in the debate. Thus, when the issue is resolved, say by a majority votingto adopt a certain set of proposals, every participant, whether in the
majority or in the minority, will have the same complete informationabout the track the debate has taken.
47
Braybrook's narrative delivers us an image of the discourse principle unfolding in the real
world, and brings several considerations about the discourse principle to light. The first
consideration is that of the scale of the debate. Braybrook's narrative insists that each
participant remain informed of each and every argument that ends up affecting the final
outcome. In order to, and in the process of, engaging in this criticism, the participants
will come to grasp the meaning of each other's arguments, and thus will form an
understanding of the ideological background and belief structure of every participant.
Even in a small group of individuals, such a process is time consuming, as anyone who
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has served on a committee might already know. Finally, at the conclusion of the debate,
the individuals each understand the entire scope and depth of the debate because of their
involvement throughout. This understanding is a mutual bond between the participants,
from which they are able to make and defend arguments, which is what Habermas terms
the intersubjective perspective. Therefore, even a less ideal picture of deliberation leads
to some of the very positive outcomes of a mutually shared perspective and an all
inclusive understanding of the outcome for each individual involved.
Another issue which jumps out from Braybrook's narrative is that the resolution
of the discussion is in the form of a majority wins vote. Habermas views a vote as a
measure which is only taken when the question at the center of the deliberation is time
dependent. A vote is taken to generate the necessary outcome, but in contrast to
Braybrook, the discussion is not considered resolved at this point. Rather, for Habermas
the discussion always remains open. This dissonance between Braybrook and Habermas
begins to show, I believe, the underlying tension between ideal deliberation and its
required practical outcomes. Habermas presents a carefully crafted theory which ensures
that we do not taint our outcomes by closing debate with a vote. Yet, when enacted by
actual participants, this fine distinction is easily lost, as Braybrooks use of language,
demonstrates.
James Borhman suggests that Habermass standard of legitimacy as laid out in the
democratic principle is too strict to be realized in any real society. The standard of
unanimity, that allmust agree, in a pluralist society is far too high, argues Borhman48
.
He suggests that Habermas reformulate the democratic principle to a law is legitimate
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only if it is agreed to in a participatory process that is fair and open to all citizens.49
This reformulation places emphasizes the process proceeding a decision, and places
legitimacy not in the final agreement of every citizens agreement to every particular
decision, but rather the ongoing participation of citizens in the discourse that formulates
those decisions.
Bohmans reformulation adds insight into the deeper purpose of deliberative
democracy, but I am skeptical that Habermas would disagree with him. In his discussion
of voting, Habermas argues that the process of the debate will likely continue
indefinitely. The practical reality of society dictates that consensus is a goal at some time
far in the future. Voting is a pause in the process of a discourse that is necessitated by
time or institutional pressures to decide, but that vote does not stop the process. In fact,
Habermas argues that members of a minority giving their consent to the outcome of a
vote hinges on the proviso that they themselves retain the opportunity of winning over
the majority with better arguments and thus of revising the previous decision.50
In this
light, Bohmans suggestion elucidates the deep tie of the process, rather than the
outcome, of political deliberation to legitimacy.
2.4Modern Challenges and Aggregative Solutions
The hope of deliberative democracy is high. It has the capacity to strengthen
societal cohesion as well as the foundations of democratic government. This proposal is
especially important at this moment in history, as democracy is spread to new corners of
the world and the democracies of old face new and deep challenges. If citizens were to
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deliberate over legislation with the express purpose of reaching a consensus, or even a
compromise, I believe that many of the ideological splits and powerful roadblocks that
plague the current system would be swiftly removed. However, the problems of
modernity continue to plague and institutionalization of deliberative democracy. The
pluralism of beliefs prevents consensus, the scale of modern societies prevents society-
wide deliberations, and the general facts of politics prevent the realization of any kind of
idealization. These problems must be confronted in the coming years by democratic
theorists if deliberative democracy is to have a chance of realizing its potential.
Presently, the processes of deliberative democracy cannot expect full success, and insofar
as they fail, we must rely on the time-tested process trusted by democracy for hundreds of
years: aggregative voting.
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Chapter 3: Aggregative Voting
3.1 Introduction
I argued in the previous two chapters that a deliberative democracy will always
have occasions when voting is the only democratic means of generating political
decisions. This chapter is concerned with an analysis of the act of voting and the methods
of addition, or aggregation, of those votes in order to determine a majority choice. I
begin with an outline of aggregative voting that explores the extent to which the
procedures leading up to a vote affect the outcome. Then the narrative shifts towards the
aggregation of a single vote and the problems of cycling that arise. The chapter ends
with a discussion of the manipulation of aggregative voting.
3.2 Democratic Voting and the Aggregation of Preferences
For democratic voting to be justifiable, we must at the very least know that the
outcome of the vote represents an actual majority choice, that the vote was not
manipulated, and that the voters were free to choose their actual preference. In the scope
of this paper, an individual's preferences are thought of as being expressed in their vote,
and so an aggregation of preferences is an aggregation of votes.
In a democracy, one might think that a vote should easily to meet these
conditions, but voting can be a complicated process, clouding the results. For example,
in American local and district wide elections the aggregation of votes is in the form of a
simple plurality system. These elections generally determine positions from school board
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member to members of congress. In a Presidential election, there are three steps to the
aggregation of preferences in the form of votes. The election begins with fiery political
primaries that often decide candidates for each major party. Next, those winners are
presented to the entire public in a state wide vote; nationally, the vote is completed in
three rounds: first a primary, then a popular election which chooses official presidential
electors, and finally a vote by electors in the Electoral College.
In American legislative decisions on proposed bills, we discover several more
methods of aggregative voting. Any bill must first be introduced and approved by a
committee, and within this small group the proposal goes through several rounds of
voting of modifications and amendments. Then, a full committee vote determines
whether the bill is considered by the full legislature. In the greater legislative body the
proposal is subject to another round of amendments and votes on those amendments.
Finally, depending on whether the bill is in the Senate or the House, the bill might require
several more procedural votes which will bring about a final vote, yea or nay, on the
content. Thus, to think of the vote on a bill as a simple yea or nay vote by the members
of the legislature, or an election as a simple decision between a few candidates, is
mistaken. In fact, most methods of aggregation are more than one-shot events, due to
nominations, primaries, and a number of other processes of alternative reduction which
are attached to decision making procedures.
However, even if we limit our interest to the tally of votes in a one-shot context,
where a number of alternatives are presented to some number of individuals, there are
multiple voting systems from which one might choose. To name a few, there is the
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Borda count, the Condorcet method, plurality wins, runoff voting, instant runoff voting,
the Hare method, approval voting, the Schulze method, and the two thirds majority
criterion, and others. Luckily, all of these voting systems work on a very similar set of
principles anchored to the ideal of majority rule. Insofar as they are similar in this way,
we can refer to them together as methods of aggregative voting.
When votes are aggregated, it is common to refer to the order of options
collectively chosen by the community as the social choice profile. As with individual
preference profiles, we expect that the social choice profile should be logically transitive.
Transitivity in any profile implies a logical order. In other words, transitivity means that
if A is preferred to B, and B to C, then A is also preferred to C. Intransitivity is the
violation of this type of logical order. The most classic case of intransitivity in a social
choice profile is the paradox of voting.1
3.3 The Paradox of Voting
In the paradox of voting, we are presented with three individuals, 1, 2, and 3 who
are attempting to decide on some social question with three alternatives, A, B and C.
Individual 1 prefers A to B, and B to C, 2 prefers B to C, and C to A, and 3 prefers C to
A, and A to B. The method of aggregation chosen is the Condorcet pair-wise comparison
method, which looks at the options in pairs to determine which one beats the rest most
often. In our paradox, when A and B are compared, 2 individuals prefer A to B, so A is
socially preferred to B. Similarly, when B and C are compared, B is preferred twice to C,
so B is the social choice over C. The paradox arises when C is compared to A, and in this
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case, two individuals also prefer C to A. Aggregated through the Condorcet method, the
social profile requires that A is preferred to B, which is preferred to C, which is then
preferred to A. Thus, A is preferred to A, which is a logical impossibility, and makes the
social choice profile intransitive. To summarize, from a set of individuals with logical or
transitive preferences this method of aggregation does not return a result that is also
transitive.
3.4 Intransitivity and Voting: Arrow's Possibility Theorem
The modern critique of methods of aggregation truly found its voice in the 1950s
with the economist Kenneth Arrow. Arrow, who later won the Nobel Prize in
Economics, was concerned with possibility of intransitivity in the aggregation of
preferences. What makes Arrows work noteworthy is that he takes this single case of
intransitivity and generalizes it to all methods of voting. In his own words:
For any method of deriving social choices by aggregating individual
preference patterns which satisfies certain natural conditions, it is possible
to find individual preference patterns which give rise to a social choicepattern which is not a linear ordering.
2
Simply put, he argues that there is no method of adding up votes that can return a
reasonable and defensible result in all possible cases.
Arrow's argument defines five reasonable conditions of the construction of a
social welfare function3 and attempts to find a method of aggregation that can meet all
five criteria in all cases. In describing Arrows proof, I will attempt to avoid unnecessary
formalism as much as possible. However, in order to present parts of his argument in
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their original and more powerful form I will offer a quick explanation of his notation.
I find a mathematical analogy helpful in thinking about the span of options that
Arrows formula must represent. Simple mathematical relationships can either be greater
than, less than, or equal to, or some combination of the three. Symbolically, we represent
the quality of greater than as > because the number on the left is greater than the one on
the right, less than as 3. In
analogy, Arrow is interested in the relative position in a preference order of two different
options, and so he constructs a relational notation. When one option is outright preferred
to another option (> in the mathematics analogy), this relation is symbolized by aP.
So, for instance if x is preferred to y (x>y), he writes itxPy. For the case where there is
no preference between options x and y, (x=y) it is presented asxIy, or the individual is
indifferent to x and y. Whenx is either preferred to or is indifferent toy, (xy) it is
represented byxRy, which is known as a weak preference order. Also, in the case thatx
is preferred less thany, we must only rephrase it toy is preferred tox, oryPx. These
relations,P,I, andR constitute the whole set of relational possibilities for linear
preference orders of comparable alternatives.
To specify the actor whose preferences we are referring to, Arrow places a
subscript next to the preference relation. Thus the symbol for an individual i who prefers
x to y isxPiy, and for individual one in the paradox of voting, we writeAP1B andBP1C.
As long as individual 1s preferences are transitive, AP1Ccan be inferred from the other
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two (if A>B and B>C, then A>C). To represent the social choice outcome no subscript is
used.2
One final piece of notation is the use of a prime () on the relational symbol. The
prime signifies an independent preference order over the same set of alternatives by the
same individual. So, for example, we can writexPiy andxPiy, signifying that the primed
and unprimed preference relations are part of different overall sets of preference orders.
For instance, the full preference orders could bexPiy, yPiz, andxPiy, zPiy. At this point I
will begin with Arrows proof, now armed with the necessary notational knowledge.
Arrow asks us to consider a society of two individuals, 1 and 2, with three
alternatives,x, y, andz, trying to make a choice through constructing an aggregate social
welfare function. The social welfare function is subject to several basic and logical
conditions of restraint in order to ensure that the aggregation of preferences returns a
normatively acceptable result.
For example, if a society is trying to collectively decide some policy, the social
welfare function must be able to incorporate, or be defined for, every allowed individual
ordering of preferences. It might be that some orderings are not allowed, for instance
Germany no longer tolerates Nazi sympathizers. For those orderings that are allowed all
2Arrow offers several uses of the notation for clarity (the parenthetical explanations are mine in the form of
(mathematical analogue. Or, the ordinary language explanation)):a) For allx, xRx. (x=x. Or, x is indifferent, and so must also be related by R, to itself.)
b) IfxPy, then xRy. (If x>y, then xy. Or, if x is preferred to y, x must also be preferred orindifferentto y.)
c)
IfxPy andyPz, thenxPz. (If x>y and y>z, then x>z. Or, if x is preferred to y and y to z, then xmust be preferred to z.)
d) IfxIy andyIz, thenxIz. (If x=y and y=z, then x=z. Or, if x is indifferent to y and y is indifferent toz, then x is indifferent to z.)
e) For all x and y, eitherxRy oryPx. (Either xy or y>x. Or, x can be either preferred or indifferent toy, but if it is neither of those, y must be preferred to x.)
f) IfxPy andyRz, thenxPz. (If x>y and yz, then x>z. Or, if x is preferred to y and y is preferred orindifferent to z, then x must be preferred to z.)
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possible preference orders must be accounted for. Derived from this type of
consideration, the formal definition of the first condition is:
Condition 1: The social welfare function is defined for every admissiblepair of individual orderings,R1,R2.4
Remembering thatR1,R2are the preference orderings for individual one and individual
two in the hypothetical society, the formal definition of the first condition simply requires
the social welfare function to be defined, or be able to aggregate, any allowable
combinations for individuals one and two.
The second condition ensures that the social welfare function does not, for some
alternative, respond negatively when an individual changes their preference for that
alternative positively. For example, if the aggregation of votes determines thatx is
societally preferred toy and an individual then decides to change their vote fromy tox,
the total aggregated result should not then change toy being preferred tox. This would
mean that someone increasing their preference for an alternative decreases the social
preference for that alternative. Because this result is undesirable, Arrow presents the
second condition of the social welfare function:
Condition 2: If an alternative social statex rises or does not fall in ordering
of each individual without any other change in those orderings and ifx waspreferred to another alternative y before the change in individual orderings,
thenx is still preferred toy.5
In a more formal way, Arrow has stated that an alternative should not be lowered in the
societal rankings by greater support in the individual preference rankings. An
aggregation that satisfies this condition is commonly referred to as being monotonic.
The third condition defining the social welfare function is commonly referred to
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as the independence of irrelevant alternatives. Independence from irrelevant alternatives
means that if there is if the social welfare function is comparing to alternatives,x andy,
the results of that comparison should not depend on a third alternativez. If we imagine a
vote with three candidatesx, y, z, where the aggregated social preference tells us that x is
preferred toy which is preferred toz, orxPy, yPz. In an unfortunate turn of events in our
hypothetical vote, the candidate zdies of a heart attack close to the time of the vote.
Arrow argues that:
the choice to be made among the set of surviving candidates should be
independent of the preferences of individuals for the nonsurvivingcandidates. To assume otherwise would be to make the result of the
election dependant on the obviously accidental circumstance of whether acandidate died before or after the date of polling.
6
In order to avoid an effect by an alternative on the social preference order of two other
alternatives, the formal restriction on the social welfare function is stated in condition
three as:
Condition3: LetR1,R
2, andR
1,R
2be two sets of individual orderings. If,
for both individuals i and for allx andy in a given set of alternatives S,xRiy
if and only ifxRiy then the social choice made from Sis the same whether
the individual orderings areR1,R2, orR1,R
2.( Independence of irrelevant
alternatives.)7
The condition defines two different preference orders for individuals one and two over
the same set of alternatives, and in both ordersx is at least as good asy. From this,
Arrow claims, we must know thatx is preferred toy,by this knowledge alone.
The last two conditions essentially ensure the democratic nature of the
aggregation of preferences. The fourth condition is:
Condition 4: A social welfare function is not to be imposed.8
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A social welfare function is imposed if it does not respond at all to change in preference
orders of the individuals in that society.3
An imposed social welfare function could, for
instance, orderxPy even if the entire society unanimously preferredy tox, oryPx.
Imposition violates any sense of democratic rule by the people, because the people's
preferences are completely ignored.
The fifth and final condition states that:
Condition 5: The social welfare function is not to be dictatorial (non
dictatorship).
9
Simply put, if the social welfare functions preference order always and only depends on
one individuals preferences, then the social welfare function is determined dictatorially
and the controlling individual is a dictator.4
In total, the conditions that have been placed on the social welfare function are as
follows: it must be defined for all allowed preference orders, it must be monotonic, it
must not take into account irrelevant alternatives, it must not be imposed, and it must not
be dictatorial. We can say with some confidence that these general conditions are
operating principles that should be incorporated into any logical and ethical system of
aggregation of societal preferences.
3 The formal definition of imposition: A social welfare function will be said to be imposedif for some pair of
distinct alternativesx andy,xRy for any set of individual orderingsR1, R2, whereR is the social orderingcorresponding toR1,R2.
4Formal Definition of dictatorship: A social welfare function is said to be dictatorial if there exists an individual i
such that for allx andy, xPiy impliesxPy regardless of the orderings of all individuals other than i, where P is thesocial preference relation corresponding to those orderings
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Arrow's breakthrough was in proving that a system of aggregation satisfying the
conditions does not exist because satisfying those conditions leads to a contradiction.10
The contradiction arises when you examine a hypothetical decision by two individuals
over three alternatives. For two of the three alternatives, x and y, there are two general
possibilities of preference ordering, which are: (1) both individuals prefer the same
alternative, such thatxP1y andxP2y, or (2) they prefer different alternatives, for example
xP1y andyP2x.
For the first alternative(1), the social welfare function must return the resultxPy,
because if it were to return any other ordering, the function would violate condition four,
the imposition condition. Thus Arrow writes:
Consequence 1: IfxP1y and xP2y thenxPy.11
In the case of the second possibility (2) where our individuals do not agree (xP1y
andyP2x), the social welfare function can return one of three results:xPy,yPx, orxIy.
For the case ofxPy, returned for the preference profiles ofxP1y andyP
2x, it can be
shown that individual one is a dictator12
, violating the dictatorship condition. IfyPx
resulted, individual two would similarly be a dictator. Therefore, the only fair social
welfare function must have the outcome of an indifferent society:
Consequence 25: IfxP1y and yP2x, thenxIy.
13
So, with the conditions of fairness for the social welfare function, we have two
consequences, that if the two individual society is split, the society is indifferent (a tie), or
5 Here I have departed from Arrows numbering system of the consequences for clarity.
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if the society is unanimous, the society prefers that option.
In this hypothetical society of two we can imagine that individual one has a
preference ordering ofxP1y andyP1z, (x>y>z)whileindividual twos ordering iszP2x,
xP2y (z>x>y). From the first consequence, we know that the social welfare function must
returnxPy (x>y). Also, with preference ordersyP1z(y>z) andzP2y (z>y) consequence
two requires thatyIz(y=z). Thus, because the social welfare function must be transitive,
or logically ordered,xPy andyIz(x>y=z) requiresxPz(x>z). However, if we look back
to the original preference orders, we see thatxP1z(x>y) andzP2x (z>x) which, by
consequence two, must resultxIz(x=z). Arrow concludes that it cannot be thatx is both
preferred and indifferent toz[(x>z x=z)]. Hence, the assumption that there is a social
welfare function compatible with conditions 1-5 has led to a contradiction.14
In any
aggregation of votes, there will always be some probability that the aggregation of those
votes will lead to a logical contradiction.
To generalize and summarize his result, Arrow offers the Possibility Theorem:
If there are at least three alternatives among which the members of societyare free to order in any way, then every societal welfare function satisfying
conditions 2 and 3 and yielding a social order satisfying Axioms 1 and 2
must be either imposed or dictatorial. The Possibility Theorem shows that,
if no prior assumptions are made about the nature of individual orderings,there is no method of voting which will remove the paradox of voting,
neither plurality voting nor any scheme of representation, no matter how
complicated.15
In his possibility theorem Arrow has shown that, even if there happens to be a society
where everyone can clearly express their own preferences and everyone is working
together in good faith to determine the majoritys preference, a fair and rational method
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of aggregation that always works does not exist. No matter how innovative or careful the
counters are, as long as the method of aggregation meets the criterion of the five
conditions, they can never eliminate the possibility of failure.
3.5 The Ends and Means of Democracy: A Study of Riker
Some thirty or so years after Arrow presented his powerful proof of the
impossibility of a social welfare function that meets certain simple conditions, William
Riker, a professor at the University of Rochester, expanded upon this theory to show the
arbitrary and meaningless nature of any voting system. In the significant work,
Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and
the Theory of Social Choice, Riker hopes, to assess whether it is sensible to pursue
democratic ends by democratic means.16
By democratic ends, Riker is referring to those values that build the philosophical
foundations for democracy. In democracy there are three fundamental values:
participation, liberty, and equality. These elements of democracy were chosen by Riker
not for their philosophic importance but rather because statistically they are the elements
that most democracies hold in common.17
His characterization is adequate, though not
necessarily complete, in the context of an analysis of deliberative democracy.
Participation on the part of the citizens is inseparable from deliberative democracy
because participation is intrinsic to the legitimacy of democratic institutions and law.
Furthermore, liberty is necessary to deliberative democracy so that individuals have the
ability to freely choose and act within both political deliberation and society as a whole.
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Finally, political equality is necessary so that deliberative results are not skewed towards
the influential and the powerful, but rather towards the true consensus of the polity.
When Riker asks whether democratic means can meet the democratic ends, he is
concerned with problems that arise potentially and actually in constructing and carrying
out a system of voting. The first question along this line of thought asks whether there is
a proper choice of method for the aggregation of votes, and whether the choice of the
system affects the outcome. The casual observer can likely provide their own example of
how the construction of the system of voting can affect the final outcome. For example,
in committees, the order of voting on different amendments and bills can return different
outcomes. The order of amendments, or procedural votes, can steer the outcomes at the
will of the agenda setter.
The primary system also has the possibility of excluding a candidate that would
be the actual majority choice of the voters. For example, in a two party system, the
nominating procedure of the candidates may eliminate a candidate that is actually
preferred to all the others nationally. Such a candidate, call him the Golden Median,
though very popular with independents as well as many people in all parties, might loose
by a narrow margin in his own party to another candidate.18
If the primary system were
designed, say, to not restrict voting to just party members but to any registered voter, the
outcomes would almost certainly be different. When the outcome of a vote is dependent
only on the choice of method of aggregation, a burden must be placed upon finding the
rightandfairmethod of voting that can be justified over all of the rest.
Riker contends that we cannot choose between voting systems on any ethical or
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value based criteria because at least on a basic, perhaps superficial level, all of the
methods of aggregation are fair. If, for any choice that is supposedly fair because it
comes out of a fair procedure, there is another choice from another procedure that is fair
in a different and conflicting way, then it is difficult to justify the fairness of any
choice.19
However, Riker argues that the efficiency of systems of voting can be
analyzed by testing the system against a reasonable set of criteria. These criteria are very
much analogous to those presented by Arrow, both in form and content. Yet, where
Arrow defines reasonable criteria based on logical transitivity, Riker looks to fairness.
The first criterion of a fair vote is that it is monotonic.20
As we saw in Arrows
second condition, a voting system should