Social choice and topology a case of pure and applied mathematics

Abstract

The existence of a social choice model on a preference space P is a topological, even homotopical problem. It has been solved 50 years ago, under different terminology, by the author and, a little later, jointly with T. Ganea and P.J. Hilton. P must be an H-space and either contractible or homotopy equivalent to a product of Eilenberg-MacLane spaces over the rationals.