Abstract
how fair it can be. In this article, the presidential nomination campaign is subjected to an analysis using basic tools of social choice theory. The objective is to find out whether the nomination campaign can be made democratically fairer, while maintaining the qualities it has that make it a workable majoritarian method of public choice. Ultimately we will consider whether the commitment to plebiscitary democracy can be justified in view of the endemic fairness problems. that are problematical from a public choice perspective, two of which are central and related. First, these campaigns often have more than two candidates competing. It is literally impossible to guarantee social transitivity from transitive individual preferences in an electoral procedure when there are more than two alternatives, as Kenneth Arrow (1963) demonstrated. Second, because of the majority requirement in these campaigns, it is possible that no candidate will achieve the necessary number of delegates to secure the nomination on the basis of plebiscitary events. There are other complications related to the structural peculiarities of presidential nomination campaigns, especially the fact that electoral events occur in a series and that the field of candidates usually changes during the course of the campaign. These are covered later. In this section, the focus is on defining democratic fairness and explain
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call