The Quintilian School in the history of Social Choice: an early tentative step from plurality rule to pairwise comparisons
Fecha
2024Versión
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Tipo
Artículo / Artikulua
Versión
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa
Identificador del proyecto
Impacto
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10.1007/s00355-023-01499-7
Resumen
We present two texts from Roman Empire times that add two early appearances to the stream of the history of Social Choice Theory. One is from the School of Rhetoric of Quintilian (35–96), a contemporary of Pliny the Younger, who developed an early criticism of Plurality rule and, in search of a better method, sketched a choice by pairwise comparisons. The other is from Aulus Gellius (160–180), wh ...
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We present two texts from Roman Empire times that add two early appearances to the stream of the history of Social Choice Theory. One is from the School of Rhetoric of Quintilian (35–96), a contemporary of Pliny the Younger, who developed an early criticism of Plurality rule and, in search of a better method, sketched a choice by pairwise comparisons. The other is from Aulus Gellius (160–180), who used the term “aporia” applied to a voting problem while commenting on a voting by Plurality that yielded counterintuitive or seemingly illogical results. These early analyses and critiques of Plurality rule reveal the flaws of a system that, despite its intuitive or spontaneous appeal, has evident failures that have triggered theoretical reflection from remote times. The two texts also show how paradoxical and problematic situations serve as powerful incentives for reflection and advancement of knowledge and can trigger attempts to address and refine voting and election methods to find more robust and fair alternatives. [--]
Materias
Social choice,
Plurality rule,
Pairwise comparisons
Editor
Springer
Publicado en
Social Choice and Welfare 2024
Departamento
Universidad Pública de Navarra. Departamento de Derecho /
Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa. Zuzenbidea Saila /
Universidad Pública de Navarra/Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa. Institute for Advanced Social Research - ICOMMUNITAS
Versión del editor
Entidades Financiadoras
Open Access funding provided by Universidad Pública de Navarra. Funding was provided
by Agencia Estatal de Investigación [Grant no. PID2019-106904RB-I00/AEI/https://doi.
org/10.13039/501100011033].