Behavioral Social Choice: Probabilistic Models, Statistical Inference, and Applications

Behavioral Social Choice looks at the probabilistic foundations of collective decision-making rules. The authors challenge much of the existing theoretical wisdom about social choice processes, and seek to restore faith in the possibility of democratic decision-making. In particular, they argue that worries about the supposed prevalence of majority rule cycles that would preclude groups from reaching a final decision about what alternative they prefer have been greatly overstated. In practice, majority rule can be expected to work well in most real-world settings. Furthermore, if there is a problem, they show that the problem is more likely to be one of sample estimates missing the majority winner in a close contest (e.g., Bush-Gore) than a problem about cycling. The authors also provide new mathematical tools to estimate the prevalence of cycles as a function of sample size and insights into how alternative model specifications can change our estimates of social orderings.

Michel Regenwetter is Associate Professor of Psychology and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Bernard Grofman is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine A.A.J. Marley is Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at McGill University Ilia M. Tsetlin is an Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences at INSEAD