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Chapter 10 Democracy and its values Consequentialist ethics evaluates actions policies or institutions in regard to the outcomes they produce Deontological ethics evaluate the intrinsic value of actins policies or institutions in light of the rights duties or obligations of the individuals involved Problems with group decision making Majority Rule and Condorcet s Paradox Round robin tournament pits each competing alternative against every other alternative an equal number of times in a series of pair wise votes Rational an actor is rational if she possesses a complete and transitive preference ordering over a set of outcomes Complete preference ordering an actor has a complete preference ordering if she can compare each pair of elements x and y in a set of outcomes in one of the following ways o Either the actor prefers x to y o Y to x o Or if she is indifferent between them The assumption of completeness essentially states that an individual can always make up his mind as to whether he prefers one option or is indifferent when presented with a pair of options Strict preference an actor is said to strictly prefer x to y if x is always better than y Weak preference an actor is said to weakly prefer x to y if x is at least as good as y Transitive preference ordering an actor has transitive preference ordering if for any x y and z in the set of outcomes it is the case that if x is weakly preferred to y and y is weakly preferred to z then it must be the case that x is weakly preferred to z o Example group does not have transitive preferences Actors whose preference orderings do not meet these conditions are said to be irrational o Completeness and transitivity Condorcet s Paradox illustrates that a group composed of individuals with rational preferences does not necessarily have rational preferences as a collectivity individual rationality is not sufficient to ensure group rationality o Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat o Ex Group would prefer D to I and I to C Logically a preference of D to C would follow However group prefers C to D o Ex 2 Majority in favor of D centralist and right wing Majority in favor of I left and right wing odd bedfellows Majority in favor of C left wing and centralist Majority does not necessarily exist until the policy debate is framed in a certain way When group intransitivity occurs there is a cycle of different majorities Condorcet Winner an option is a Condorcet winner if it beats all other options in a series of pair wise contest o Candidate who would beat any opponent in a simple majority vote 2 issue race The likelihood of group intransitivity increases with the number of alternatives under consideration or the number of voters or both We observe more policy stability than Condorcet s Paradox would suggest The Borda Count and the Reversal Paradox Suggested by Jean Charles de Borda Asks individuals to rank potential alternatives from their most to least preferred and then assigns numbers to reflect this ranking Introduction of irrelevant alternatives disconcerting o Politician can easily manipulate outcome of a decision process in order to produce their most preferred outcome Majority Rule with an Agenda Setter Sincere vote a vote for an individual s most preferred option Strategic Sophisticated voting is a vote in which an individual votes in favor of a less preferred option because she believes doing so will ultimately produce a more preferred outcome Agendas can produce very different outcomes even if we hold all the actors preferences constant Choosing the agenda is essentially equivalent to choosing which outcome will win If one of the councilors is given the power to choose the agenda she is effectively given the power to dictate the outcome of the decision making process o Power of the agenda setter It is possible to avoid the potential for group intransitivity that arises in majority rule round robin tournaments by imposing an agenda Restrictions of Preferences The Median Voter Theorem Increase spending in the hope that this would break the bank and force the city to adjust to lower levels of spending in the future than maintain current levels of spending which she thinks are too high that would slowly bleed the city dry Utility function is essentially a numerical scaling in which high numbers stand for high positions in an individual s preference ordering o Can be thought of as a numerical scale in which high numbers stand for high positions in an individual s preference ordering o Essentially indicates how satisfied an individual is with the available alternatives Single peaked preference ordering is characterized by a utility function that reaches a maximum at some point and slopes away from this maximum on either side o Utility function reaches a peak above the centrist councilor s most preferred point o Most preferred point ideal point o Basic intuition behind single peakedness is that individuals prefer outcomes that are closer to their ideal point than those that are farther away Median Voter Theorem MVT states that the ideal point of the median voter will win against any alternative in a pari wise majority rule elections if the number of voters is odd voter preferences are single peaked over single policy dimensions and voters vote sincerely Median voter is the individual who has at least half of all the voters at his position or to his right and at least half of all voters at his position or to his left o When arrayed along a single policy dimension in terms of their ideal points Could restrict the preferences of the right winged councilor such that her most preferred proposal is D her second best is C and her least is I o Preference ordering of all the councilors would be single peaked o If the status quo is at the centrist councillor s ideal point then it is an equilibrium o A similar process of convergence to the position of the centrist councilor would occur if the status quo started off to the right of C instead of to the left Once policy arrives to the ideal point there is no longer any impetus for change in the Two scenarios system o Policy that is most preferred by the centrist councilor is the only point on the policy continuum for which there is no policy alternative that is preferred by a majority of the councilors only equilibrium Group intransivity and cyclical majorities can be avoided if we are willing to both rule certain preference orderings out of bounds and reduce the policy space to a single issue dimension


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FSU CPO 2002 - Chapter 10 Democracy and its values

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