Judgement aggregation: (im)possibility theorems

F.K. Dietrich*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The aggregation of individual judgments over interrelated propositions is a newly arising field of social choice theory. I introduce several independence conditions on judgment aggregation rules, each of which protects against a specific type of manipulation by agenda setters or voters. I derive impossibility theorems whereby these independence conditions are incompatible with certain minimal requirements. Unlike earlier impossibility results, the main result here holds for any (non-trivial) agenda. However, independence conditions arguably undermine the logical structure of judgment aggregation. I therefore suggest restricting independence to “premises”, which leads to a generalised premise-based procedure. This procedure is proven to be possible if the premises are logically independent.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)286-298
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Economic Theory
Volume126
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2006

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