deliberation and voting in contemporary democratic theory

8/14/2019 Deliberation and Voting in Contemporary Democratic Theory

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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

deliberation and voting in contemporary democratic theory

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