Agenda Influence and its Implications
- Creators
- Levine, Michael E.
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Plott, Charles R.
Abstract
When choosing from many competing alternatives, groups often narrow the range of choice and then select from the remaining alternatives using a predetermined procedure or agenda. In some groups, this process may involve the use of committee reports and parliamentary procedure. In others, choices may be narrowed by common consent, by the chairman, or by some other means and "voting" may proceed in a predetermined, non-parliamentary fashion. Recent developments in the theory of group choice (embodied in a literature that has come to be known as the "social choice" literature) suggest that there probably is no single nondictatorial method of aggregating the preferences of an electorate that will reliably produce a choice which satisfies minimal consistency and rationality standards.
Additional Information
Support for this research was supplied by the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Science Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful suggestions provided by members of the USC Law Center Faculty Workshop, and the particularly helpful comments of S.H. Bice, R.P. Burton, A. Schwartz, L. Simon, and C. Wolfram. At various stages, our work was also presented to the Law-Economics Workshop at UCLA and the Legal Theory Workshop at Yale. We appreciate the opportunity afforded us by those workshops to refine our presentation. Steven Matthews, Caltech graduate student in social science, provided invaluable assistance on the project, and Michael J. Graetz provided both encouragement and important contributions at difficult moments in the evolution of this work. Despite all this assistance, review and refinement, errors, regrettably, probably persist. We grudgingly accept responsibility for all of them.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 43101
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20131219-115743132
- Henry Luce Foundation
- NSF
- Created
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2014-01-21Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers
- Other Numbering System Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 151