Voting methods, problems of majority rule, and demand-revealing procedures

Gordon Tullock made fundamental conceptual contributions to the understanding of collective choices. Tullock balanced an optimism about the capacity of political choices to facilitate gains from exchange with a pessimism about the negative externalities attending having majorities control power and dictate choices for all. Tullock’s work on both sides of this divide is surveyed, examining both the problems of voting procedures, and the promise of the demand-revealing process he helped invent, in guiding the choice of political institutions.     

A note on legal semiotics

Daoist (Taoist) rhetoric offers the potential to provide a valuable and unique vantage point for communication criticism. This claim is justified using principles of Daoist rhetoric to analyze the films A Bug's Life and Antz . The analysis demonstrates that, while they are superficially very similar, the films differ significantly. A Bug's Life views the most significant threats to society to be external, praises the use of technology, and celebrates Western values of individual cunning and bravery. Antz , on the contrary, sees the most significant social threats to be internal, resolves problems through consciousness raising and teamwork, and promotes Eastern values of community and cooperation. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of Daoist criticism for communication theory and practice. In so doing, the present paper illustrates important differences in the films, indicates central differences in Eastern and Western cultural values, and demonstrates the viability of Daoist rhetoric as a basis for communication criticism.     

A note on Nanson's rule

E.J. Nanson, in 1883, proposed a voting rule designed mainly to select the Condorcet winner. Unfortunately, much of the collective choice literature has misstated Nanson's rule. This note shows that the misstated versions of the rule and Nanson's actual rule can yield different outcomes, and it provides a counter example, which shows that Nanson's rule, although it satisfies the strong Condorcet condition, does not satisfy the weak Condorcet condition.     

A note on calculating Condorect probabilities

Probability voting models arrive at important conclusions on the paradox of voting. The computation of the probabilities uses the Selby relations for sums of powers of integers. The integers are essentially the number of voters with linear preference orderings. With an ordered set of integers the equation implicit in these calculations may have to be amended.     

A note on crime and punishment

The models developed here are intended to convince the reader that Tsebelis' results — that increased punishment leaves the equilibrium level of crime unchanged — is an example of what is possible rather than a general result. To recap the argument in words: it is true that raising the penalty on a crime may cause the enforcing agency to divert attention away to other matters, so that theexpected penalty facing the prospective criminal is not as high as it would have been had the agency not adjusted; but it is not generally true that enforcing agencies will choose to lower their probabilities of enforcement just enough to exactly offset the increased penalty, leaving the expected penalty unchanged, hence the equilibrium level of crime unchanged.⁸ this result sounds unusual when stated in words and it is when modelled using the theory of games too.This work was supported by NSF grant SES-9022882.