Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:05:33.940Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Premises of Condorcet's Jury Theorem Are Not Simultaneously Justified

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Franz Dietrich
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Condorcet's famous jury theorem reaches an optimistic conclusion on the correctness of majority decisions, based on two controversial premises about voters: they are competent and vote independently, in a technical sense. I carefully analyse these premises and show that: (i) whether a premise is justified depends on the notion of probability considered and (ii) none of the notions renders both premises simultaneously justified. Under the perhaps most interesting notions, the independence assumption should be weakened.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 56 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Austen-Smith, D. and Banks, J.. 1996. “Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem.” American Political Science Review 90: 34–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Yashar, R. and Paroush, J.. 2000. “A Nonasymptotic Condorcet Jury Theorem.” Social Choice and Welfare 17: 189–99.Google Scholar
Berend, D. and Paroush, J.. 1998. “When Is Condorcet's Jury Theorem Valid?” Social Choice and Welfare 15: 481–8.Google Scholar
Boland, P. J. 1989. “Majority Systems and the Condorcet Jury Theorem.” Statistician 38: 181–9.Google Scholar
Boland, P. J., Proschan, F., and Tong, Y. L.. 1989. “Modelling Dependence in Simple and Indirect Majority Systems.” Journal of Applied Probability 26: 81–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bovens, L. and Rabinowicz, W.. 2006. “Democratic Answers to Complex Questions: An Epistemic Perspective.” Synthese 150(1): 131–53.Google Scholar
Condorcet, M. J. A. C. 1785. “Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité rendues à la pluralité des voix.” Les Archives de la Révolution Française. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Conghlan, P. 2000. “In Defense of Unanimous Jury Verdicts: Mistrials, Communication, and Strategic Voting.” American Political Science Review 94(2): 375–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietrich, F. and List, C.. 2004. “A Model of Jury Decisions Where All Judges Have the Same Evidence.” Synthese 142: 175–202.Google Scholar
Estlund, D. 1994. “Opinion Leaders, Independence, and Condorcet's Jury Theorem.” Theory and Decision 36(2): 131–62.Google Scholar
Estlund, D. 2008. Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Estlund, D.,7 Waldron, J., Grofman, B., and Feld, S.. 1989. “Democratic Theory and the Public Interest: Condorcet and Rousseau Revisited.” American Political Science Review 83(4): 1317–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feddersen, T. and Pesendorfer, W.. 1997. “Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information.” Econometrica 65(5): 1029–58.Google Scholar
Grofman, B., Owen, G., and Feld, S. L.. 1983. “Thirteen Theorems in Search of the Truth.” Theory and Decision 15: 261–78.Google Scholar
Koriyama, Y. and Szentes, B.. 1995. “A Resurrection of the Condorcet Jury Theorem.” Working paper. University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Ladha, K. K. 1992. “The Condorcet Jury Theorem, Free Speech, and Correlated Votes.” American Journal of Political Science 36: 617–34.Google Scholar
Ladha, K. K. 1993. “Condorcet's Jury Theorem in Light of De Finetti's Theorem.” Social Choice and Welfare 10: 69–85.Google Scholar
Ladha, K. K. 1995. “Information Pooling Through Majority-rule Voting: Condorcet's Jury Theorem with Correlated Votes.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 26: 353–72.Google Scholar
Lindley, D. 1985. “Reconciliation of Discrete Probability Distributions.” In Bernando, J. M. et al. (eds.), Bayesian Statistics, vol. 2, pp. 375–90. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
List, C. Forthcoming. “The Epistemology of Special Majority Voting.” Social Choice and Welfare.Google Scholar
List, C. and Goodin, R. E.. 2001. “Epistemic Democracy: Generalizing the Condorcet Jury Theorem.” Journal of Political Philosophy 9: 277–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, C. and Pettit, P.. 2004. “An Epistemic Free Riding Problem?” In Catton, P. and Macdonald, G. (eds.), Karl Popper: Critical Appraisals, pp. 128–58. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miller, N. R. 1986. “Information, Elections, and Democracy: Some Extensions and Interpretations of the Condorcet Jury Theorem.” In Grofman, B. and Owen, G. (eds.), Information Pooling and Group Decision Making. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Nitzan, S. and Paroush, J.. 1984. “The Significance of Independent Decisions in Uncertain Dichotomous Choice Situations.” Theory and Decision 17: 47–60.Google Scholar
Nitzan, S. and Paroush, J.. 1985. Collective Decision Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Owen, G. 1986. “‘Fair’ Indirect Majority Rules.” In Grofman, B. and Owen, G. (eds.), Information Pooling and Group Decision Making. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Pearl, J. 2000. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. 1956. The Direction of Time. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Young, H. P. 1988. “Condorcet's Theory of Voting.” American Political Science Review 82: 1231–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar