Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/188896 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
Queen's Economics Department Working Paper No. 1384
Publisher: 
Queen's University, Department of Economics, Kingston (Ontario)
Abstract: 
Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem is commonly understood to invoke a dictatorship that is somehow lurking within our voting arrangements. The theorem has been described as proving that “any constitution that respects transitivity, independence of irrelevant alternatives and unanimity is a dictatorship”. But the theorem is really not about dictatorship. It is more appropriately understood as being about the spoiler problem, about the possibility that the presence of a candidate who cannot win the election himself may, nevertheless, violate the “independence of irrelevant alternatives” by switching the outcome of the election between two other candidates. The theorem becomes that no electoral system is guaranteed to avoid the spoiler problem altogether, regardless of the options and regardless of voter preferences.
Subjects: 
Impossibility Theorem
Spoilers
Dictatorship
JEL: 
D60
D72
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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