Pluralism and Social Choice

Miller, Nicholas R.

doi:10.2307/1957271

Cited by 240 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…McGann (2006) claims the the stability induced by super-majority rules is inimical to minorities because it will be harder for them to form new coalitions to undo adverse outcomes. Thus McGann-making an argument reminiscent of Dahl (1956), Ely (1980), andMiller (1983)-suggests that in a well-functioning majoritarian democracy there are unlikely to be permanent losers, because minorities can break apart the majority coalition in the future.…”

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confidence: 99%

Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?

Stephenson¹

2013

The Journal of Legal Studies

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It is often asserted that separation of legislative powers tends to make legislation both more moderate (because concessions to all veto players are needed to secure enactment) and less frequent (because sufficient concessions are sometimes infeasible). The formal analysis in this paper shows this claim to be incomplete, and sometimes incorrect. Although greater separation of powers makes legislation more difficult to enact, it also makes legislation, once enacted, more difficult to repeal. Attenuating the threat of repeal means that when one faction has sufficient power to push through extreme policies, it is more likely to do so than would be the case if legislative power were more concentrated. These two effects cut in opposite directions, and it is difficult to say, as a general matter, which will predominate. Indeed, increasing the fragmentation of legislative power may sometimes increase both the expected frequency and the expected extremism of legislative enactments. * I am grateful to

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confidence: 99%

Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?

Stephenson¹

2013

The Journal of Legal Studies

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“…In contrast, pluralists delight in the discovery of such instability or the preferences that occasion it. Miller (1983), surveying this matter, concludes that the social choice theorist's desire to maximize coherence qua transitivity in social decisions ought to be set aside so as to ensure meeting the more general goal of political stability. However, merely eschewing the theorist's admittedly myopic goal does not tell us how to best ensure a stable democracy.…”

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confidence: 99%

Constitutional stability

Ordeshook

1992

Constit Polit Econ

205

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Despite attempts to paper over the dispute, political scientists in the pluralist tra dition disagree sharply with public and social choice theorists about the importance of institutions and with William Riker in particular who argues in Liberalism against Pop ulism that the liberal institutions of indirect democracy ought to be preferred to those of populist democracy. This essay reconsiders this dispute in light of two ideas unavailable to Riker at the time. The first, offered by Russell Hardin, is that constitutions can more usefully be conceptualized as coordinating devices as opposed to social contracts. The importance of this idea is that it allows for a more theoretically satisfying view of the way that constitutions become self-enforcing. The second idea, which derives from the various applications of concepts such as the uncoveted set, argues that although institutions such as the direct election of president are subject to the usual inabilities that concern social choice theorists, those instabilities do not imply that "anything can happen" -instead, final outcomes will be constrained, where the severity of those constraints depend on institutional details. We maintain that these ideas strengthen Riker's argument about the importance of such constitutional devices as the separation of powers, bicameralism, the executive veto, and scheduled elections, as well as the view that federalism is an important component of the institutions that stabilize the American political system.We conclude with the proposition that the American Civil War should not be regarded as a constitutional failure, but rather as a success. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to controul itself. Riker bases his analysis on the research of social choice theorists such as Arrow (1963), Plott (1967, Davis and Hinich (1966), McKelvey (1976), and Schofield (1978. This research reveals two things. First, coherence (in the form of a well-defined social preference order over feasible policy outcomes) in majoritarian processes without impediments to direct citizen control of policy requires a nearly-impossible-to-achieve balance of citizen preferences on salient issues, sufficient uniformity of tastes and perceptions such that preferences on all issues (potential or otherwise) can be mapped to a single "ideological" dimension, or the existence of a unique salient issue. Second, democratic procedures such as two candidate elections and committee voting are arbitrary in the sense that outcomes and the identities of winners and losers depend on procedural details, including the order with which election candidates announce their campaign platforms, the order with which alternatives are considered in a legislative voting agenda, the identities of persons who have access to an agenda, and the list of feasible policy alternatives.From these results Riker constructs the argument ...

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“…This makes outcomes sensitive to the order of pairwise contests among options, leaving majoritarian procedures vulnerable to manipulation (Riker, 1980) avoidance of which involves either constraints on admissible preference orderings, or on the agenda-setting process, or both (Dodgson, 1887;Black, 1948;Plott, 1967;Brams and Fishburn, 1978;Shepsle, 1979;McKelvey and Schofield, 1987;Saari and Tataru, 1999). But in two intriguing essays, Nicholas Miller (1983;1996) argues that we should favour majoritarian procedures just because they are unstable in the way social choice theory suggests. For my purposes here, the relevant theme in Miller's work is the idea that, when majoritarian procedures fail to identify a clear social preference, there is sufficient uncertainty to motivate participants to continue playing subsequent rounds of the political game: future wins and losses are not sufficiently predictable to inspire unreasonable resistance or rational exit.…”

Section: Institutional Design and Dominated Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hopeful Losers? A Moral Case for Mixed Electoral Systems

King

2015

Les ateliers de l'éthique

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ABSTRACT:Liberal democracies encourage citizen participation and protect our freedoms, yet these regimes elect politicians and decide important issues with electoral and legislative systems that are less inclusive than other arrangements. Some citizens inevitably have more influence than others. Is this a problem? Yes, because similarly just but more inclusive systems are possible. Political theorists and philosophers should be arguing for particular institutional forms, with particular geographies, consistent with justice.

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Pluralism and Social Choice

Cited by 240 publications

References 56 publications

Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?

Does Separation of Powers Promote Stability and Moderation?

Constitutional stability

Hopeful Losers? A Moral Case for Mixed Electoral Systems

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