Voting and the Summation of Preferences: An interpretive Bibliographical Review of Selected Developments During the Last Decade

Abstract

87 The difficulties of building, operationalizing, and testing mathematical models of political phenomena-particularly the difficulties engendered by lack of relevant data-have been discussed by Duncan MacRae Jr. and R. Duncan Luce. See MacRae's Dimensions of Congressional Voting, University of California Publications in Sociology and Social Institutions, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1958), pp. 354-382. See Luce's Analyzing the Social Process Underlying Group Voting Patterns, in Eugene Burdick and Arthur 6. If, in fact, there actually exists an in. verse relationship between the mathematics content and the political content of this.. literature, political scientists might see this as a challenge rather than as a rationale for re jection. After all, there is little in either th( history of any related discipline or in the literature cited above which would warrant a summary rejection of the application of mathematical reasoning to the study of politics Although the surface has only been scratched those wishing to work in this area will find thai they can ignore the work already done only al their own peril. If the structure is as yet hardly visible, at least some firm foundations have already been built.