Abstract
This essay will consider the relation between the theory of committees put forward by Professor Kenneth J Arrow in his Social Choice and Individual Values (1951, 1963) and other writings, and ‘the preceding theory’, as we will call it, of the present writer. My own theory had been set out, when a book on the subject failed to gain publication, in some seven articles1 in the journals of 1948 and 1949, and again in the booklet written in collaboration with Dr R. A. Newing, Committee Decisions with Complementary Valuation (1951), whose MS, towards the end of 1949, had been submitted for publication as an article in a journal.
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Notes
[See bibliography.]
I hope to publish subsequently some account of the work by the Italian writers Antonio de Viti de Marco, Luigi Einaudi and Mauro Fasiani.
Professor Arrow speaks of the ‘well-known “paradox of voting”’ (1963: 2). I am doubtful whether, speaking of the literature before 1948, it could be said that the paradox was “well known” and think Arrow must be mistaken. [But cf. Arrow (1963: 93)-ed.]
An appreciation of this principle facilitates an understanding of Arrow’s argument (1951, 1963: 59-60).
Originally Arrow had supposed three motions to be before the committee, whose relative positions on the members’ schedules were subject to no restriction (Arrow 1963:24-5).
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McLean, I., McMillan, A., Monroe, B.L. (1998). Arrow’s Work and the Normative Theory of Committees. In: McLean, I., McMillan, A., Monroe, B.L. (eds) The Theory of Committees and Elections by Duncan Black and Committee Decisions with Complementary Valuation by Duncan Black and R.A. Newing. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4860-3_27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4860-3_27
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