I.

When a group needs to make a decision, we are faced with the problem of aggregating the
views of the individual members of that group into a single collective view that adequately reflects
the “will of the people”. How are we supposed to do this? This is a fundamental question of deep
philosophical, economic, and political significance that, around the middle of 20th century, has
given rise to the field of social choice theory. Social choice theory is the study of collective decision
processes and procedures. It is not a single theory, but a cluster of models and results concerning
the aggregation of individual inputs like votes, preferences, and judgments into collective outputs
like collective decisions, preferences, judgments, and welfare. Social choice theory is political
argument by indirection. Its roots can be traced in the Enlightenment—John Locke and Jean-
Jacques Rousseau on the difficulties in formulating a social contract, and Charles de Borda and
the Marquis de Condorcet on contradictions in voting rules. The two scholars most often
associated with the development of social choice theory are the Frenchman Nicolas de Condorcet
(1743–1794) and the American Kenneth Arrow (born 1921).

Condorcet was a liberal thinker in the era of the French Revolution who was pursued by the
revolutionary authorities for criticizing them. In his Essay on the Application of Analysis to the
Probability of Majority Decisions (1785), he encouraged a specific voting system, pairwise
majority voting, and introduced his two most outstanding insights. The first, known as Condorcet's
jury theorem. Condorcet's second insight, often called Condorcet's paradox, is the observation
that majority preferences can be ‘irrational’ even when individual preferences are ‘rational’.
Condorcet anticipated a key theme of modern social choice theory: majority rule is at once an
attainable approach of collective decision making and yet subject to some unexpected problems.
Resolving or bypassing these troubles stays one of social choice theory's core concerns.

While Condorcet had investigated a particular voting method or majority voting, Arrow
introduced a general approach to the study of preference aggregation. Impossibility theorem, also
called Arrow’s theorem, in political science, the thesis that it is generally impossible to assess the
common good. The impossibility theorem posed a major mission to 20th-century welfare
economics and to a reassessment of how democratic decision processes arrive at representative
expressions of individuals’ preferences. It has also been used to challenge the thinking of “the
public” as a significant social entity.
Amartya Sen has written brilliantly in many areas of economics and subjects beyond, and as part
of this activity he has staked out a claim to being (after Arrow) the world's leading social choice
theorist. His collected papers in the area, hereafter called CWM, carry the indirectionist
programme forward on several fronts, and then try to apply it to the measurement of poverty and
income distribution. The book seems an ideal testing ground for the work of a generation of able
minds. Sen's positive implication is that to get over Arrow's barrier to social ordering, we must
build scaffolding from information beyond consistent preferences and their aggregation in a
`welfaristic' social decision function depending only on individual utility levels.
II. MAIN IDEAS

Impossibilities

Influences on the development of social choice theory have been manifold over the centuries.
Mathematicians, social scientists and philosophers made important contributions of different
kinds. If a social welfare function is an expression of the general will of the population, it should
be able to deal with whatever kind of preferences the individual members of a given society have.
According to Arrow (1951), assuming that individuals’ preferences are rational, the theorem
stipulates that four minimal conditions must apply to the decision procedure for its result to be
valid which are:

 requires that individuals be permitted to have any rational preference ordering over
alternatives
 there not be a single dictator whose preference over a single pair of alternatives holds for
the group decision
 the collective ranking over outcomes remains unchanged if one of the alternatives ceases
to be considered
 a unanimous preference over a pair of outcomes implies a collective preference over that
pair

Given these minimal assumptions, the Impossibility Theorem proves that it is impossible to
construct any procedure that results in a collectively rational expression of individual desires. The
theorem opposes the notion of a collective democratic will, whether derived through civic
deliberation or interpreted by experts who paternalistically apply knowledge of what is best for a
population. The theorem also denies that there could be objective basic needs or universal criteria
that any procedure for collective decision making should recognize, such as minimal nutrition
standards or human rights.

An important impossibility theorem in social choice theory refers to the fact that it can be
advantageous for individuals to misrepresent their preferences and, by doing so, to achieve an
outcome that is more favourable for them than the one that would have come about if they had
announced their true or honest preferences. This phenomenon is well known from the allocation
of public goods where individuals may want to hide their true willingness to pay in order to achieve
a lower contribution fee for themselves. According to Gibbard and Satterthwaite (1973), if
individual rank orderings are unrestricted, if furthermore the aggregation method is “monotonic”
or responsive to changes in the individuals’ preference rankings. If there are at least three social
alternatives, the only non-manipulable or “strategy-proof” aggregation method is dictatorial.

Possibilities

Social choice theory is a very broad discipline, covering a variety of distinct questions, and it may
be useful to mention a few of the problems as illustrations of its subject matter. (Sen, 1999) The
impossibility results certainly deserve serious study. They often have wide—indeed sweeping—
preach, not merely covering day-today politics, but also questioning the possibility of any assured
framework for making social welfare judgments for the society as a whole. The possibility of
constructive welfare economics and social choice and their use in making social welfare
judgments and in devising practical measures with normative significance turns on the need for
broadening the informational basis of such choice. Different types of informational enrichment
have been considered in the literature. A crucial element in this broadening is the use of
interpersonal comparisons of well-being and individual advantage. It is not surprising that the
rejection of interpersonal comparisons must cause difficulties for reasoned social decision, since
the claims of different persons, who make up the society, have to be assessed against each other.
We cannot even understand the force of public concerns about poverty, hunger, inequality, or
tyranny, without bringing in interpersonal comparisons in one form or another. The information on
which our informal judgments on these matters rely is precisely the kind of information that has to
be—and can be—incorporated in the formal analysis of systematic social choice.
III. PERSPECTIVE ON THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Choices made by a society often impact the individuals making up this society. It therefore seems
reasonable to ground these choices on the preferences of the individuals. The choice of a
candidate (law, project, social state, etc.) then depends on the outcome of an election in which
the individuals express their preferences. A voting system uses the information provided by the
voters in order to determine the elected candidate or, more generally, the decision made by the
group. Human beings have always lived in groups, and their individual lives have invariably
depended on group decisions. But the challenges of group choice can be daunting, particularly
given the divergent interests and concerns of the group’s members. So, how should collective
decision-making be carried out?

Full comparability of mental states such as utility is never possible, however, human beings are
able to make some interpersonal comparisons of utility because they share some common
backgrounds, cultural experiences, etc. The social choice approach has something substantial to
offer within the moral, ethical considerations involved in human rights formulation by offering a
more systematic and analytical reasoning basis to the subject. Without getting into the
mathematical details of the principle involved in the theoretical construction of social choice, a
general linkage between the formal reasoning behind social choice theory and its operational
connection with human rights exists, using freedoms as an integral part of the human rights based
approach to development.

Since we are talking human rights, particularly freedom, we could also insinuate democracy in
this theory. Democracy plays a huge role in the contemporary world. Why did Arrow imply the
impossibility of a general will or a social choice if it is beneficial? Because democracy doesn't
necessarily lead to social justice. Because it's the majority who makes the laws and the rules,
regardless of whether weak minorities like these laws and rules or not. In a divided democratic
society, quite often there is nothing weak minorities can do to protect their rights. I am not saying
that this is what automatically happens, but it is the real world. We have our direct democracy,
where individuals get to decide on their own and representative democracy where we get to elect
people who will represent our rights. It’s just a matter of choosing the right people because
democracy is about ruling and being ruled.
IV. ANALYSIS

Individuals do not typically reason in isolation when confronted with collective decision making,
but rather take into consideration the preferences of like-minded individuals and engage in
strategic activities such as influence, persuasion and information exchange. Consider the
example of a vote in a small committee, like a department meeting or a company board. Members
typically have partial knowledge of other members’ preferences, and before a decision is taken
they will take strategic actions on which piece of information to disclose and to whom. There are
important variables that they take into account: they know who are the people they can count on,
they know who are the people whose opinion they trust, they also estimate whether their opinion
will be influential and to whom.

I think it is hard to come up with a decision where the general public will all agree on. It is usually
approved only by a specific majority. Especially in the modern world, everyone reeks individuality
thus having many differences. So the impossibility that Arrow poses is actually real and possible.
However, the rejection of interpersonal comparisons must cause difficulties for reasoned social
decision, since the claims of different persons, who make up the society, have to be assessed
against each other. We cannot even understand the force of public concerns about poverty,
hunger, inequality, or tyranny, without bringing in interpersonal comparisons in one form or
another. The information on which our informal judgments on these matters rely is precisely the
kind of information that has to be—and can be—incorporated in the formal analysis of systematic
social choice.

The presence of the social media makes it harder for us to actually have a one voice, and that’s
a good thing. In that way, we would be able to assess and compare different opinions, judgments,
and decisions. Although the majority will always win, it is important to consider that the majority’s
vote should benefit the general. BUT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE REAL WORLD IS DIFFERENT
FROM WHAT WE HAVE IN OUR MINDS. EVEN IF WE EXERCISE OUR FREEDOMS AND USE
OUR VOICES TO RIGHT THE WRONGS OF THE SYSTEM, WE’D STILL BE LEFT UNHEARD
BECAUSE THE PEOPLE IN POWER CHOOSE TO STAY BLIND AND DEAF TO OUR NEEDS.
V. REFERENCES

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-choice/

https://www.revolvy.com/page/Social-choice-theory

https://www.irit.fr/~Umberto.Grandi/publications/socialchoicenetworks-final.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23596665?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://www.britannica.com/topic/impossibility-theorem#ref1181305

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320509399_Social_choice_theory_and_its_application
_in_a_human_rights_based_approach_to_development/download

https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/suz/dam/jcr:ffffffff-df42-7cac-0000-00006e1201f6/Sen_5.pdf

https://bricsmagazine.com/en/articles/social-choice-and-social-welfare
A STUDY ON SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY AND ITS PERSPECTIVE ON THE
CONTEMPORARY WORLD

LAPUS, ASHLEY JEAN G.

BAPS 1-2