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Pluralism and Social Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Nicholas R. Miller
Nicholas R. Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Abstract

Pluralist political theory identifies certain patterns of political preferences as promoting the “stability” of democratic political systems and others as threatening to such stability. Social choice theory likewise identifies certain patterns of political preferences as leading to “stability” in social choice under majority rule and related collective decision rules, and other patterns as leading to “unstable” social choice. But the preference patterns identified by pluralist theory as promoting stability are essentially those identified by social choice theory as entailing instability. Thus the notions of stability and the implicit normative criteria associated with the two theories are very close to being logically incompatible. This incompatibility suggests that the social choice ideal of collective rationality may not be one that we should endorse. Indeed, the generic instability of the pluralist political process and its consequent collective irrationality may contribute to the stability of pluralist political systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 734 - 747
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1983

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