The Possibility of Self-Government

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Bird
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Intuitive Concept ◽  
The Common

Many have suggested that the findings of social choice theory demonstrate that there can be no “will of the people.” This has subversive implications for our intuitive concept of self-government. I explore the relation between the notion of a “social will,” that of self-government, and the impossibility theorems of social choice theory. I conclude that although the concept of the social will is essential to that of self-government, the findings of social choice theory do not cast doubt upon the possibility of either. Unlike many attempts to respond to the threat posed by social choice theory, my argument does not require any appeal to the problematic notion of the common good.

What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.

Precursors to Public Choice

2019 ◽  
pp. 796-816
Author(s):  
Iain McLean
Keyword(s):  
Public Choice ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mathematical Skill ◽  
The Many ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter reviews the many appearances, disappearances, and reappearances of axiomatic thought about social choice and elections since the era of ancient Greek democracy. Social choice is linked to the wider public-choice movement because both are theories of agency. Thus, just as the first public-choice theorists include Hobbes, Hume, and Madison, so the first social-choice theorists include Pliny, Llull, and Cusanus. The social-choice theory of agency appears in many strands. The most important of these are binary vs. nonbinary choice; aggregation of judgement vs. aggregation of opinion; and selection of one person vs. selection of many people. The development of social choice required both a public-choice mindset and mathematical skill.

scholarly journals Dobro wspólne okiem socjologa — kilka uwag porządkujących

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Bartosz Mika
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Social Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Collective Ownership ◽  
The Third ◽  
Contemporary Sociology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

This text can be defined as an attempt to look at the question of the common good through sociological glasses. The author suggests that many of the issues subsumed under  the term “the common good” have already been elucidated and described in detail on the basis of classical and contemporary sociology. If it is assumed that the common good can be understood triply, as (1) a postulate of the social good, (2) materially, as an object of collective ownership, and (3) as an effect of the individual’s life in society, then it must be admitted that, at least in the third case, reference to the collected achievements of sociology is necessary in order to describe the common good properly.

Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 567-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Grofman ◽  
Scott L. Feld
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
General Will ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The People ◽  
Collective Judgment ◽  
Jury Theorem ◽  
The Common

We identify three basic elements of Rousseau's theory of the general will: (1) there is a common good; (2) citizens are not always accurate in their judgments about what is in the common good; and (3) when citizens strive to identify the common good and vote in accordance with their perceptions of it, the vote of the Assembly of the People can be taken to be the most reliable means for ascertaining the common good. We then show that Condorcet's (1785) model of collective judgment shares these assumptions with Rousseau and that understanding the implications of Condorcet's (1785) “jury theorem” enables us to clarify many of the most obscure aspects of Rousseau's treatment of the general will, including his discussion of the debilitating effects of factions and his confidence in the ability of the Assembly of the People to discern the general will by means of voting.

Bargaining in Legislatures

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 1181-1206 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Baron ◽  
John A. Ferejohn
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
The Social ◽  
Free Model ◽  
Sequential Nature ◽  
Choice Literature ◽  
Formal Rules

Bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided. Legislative outcomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature. Although the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria, it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures. In our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts, explicitly taking into account the strategies members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting. The model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard, institution-free model of social choice theory yields no equilibrium.

A Failure of Modernization: Police Reform, The “Common Good,” and Serfdom In Eighteenth-Century Russia

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-271
Author(s):  
Hugh D. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Creation

For Russian subjects not locked away in their villages and thereby subject almost exclusively to landlord control, administration in the eighteenth century increasingly took the form of the police. And as part of the bureaucracy of governance, the police existed within the constructions of the social order—as part of social relations and their manifestations through political control. This article investigates the social and mental structures—the habitus—in which the actions of policing took place to provide a better appreciation of the difficulties of reform and modernization. Eighteenth-century Russia shared in the European discourse on the common good, the police, and social order. But whereas Michel Foucault and Michael Ignatieff see police development in Europe with its concern to surveil and discipline emerging from incipient capitalism and thus a product of new, post-Enlightenment social forces, the Russian example demonstrates the power of the past, of a habitus rooted in Muscovy. Despite Peter’s and especially Catherine’s well-intended efforts, Russia could not succeed in modernization, for police reforms left the enserfed part of the population subject to the whims of landlord violence, a reflection, in part, of Russia having yet to make the transition from the feudal manorial economy based on extra-economic compulsion to the capitalist hired-labor estate economy. The creation of true centralized political organization—the creation of the modern state as defined by Max Weber—would require the state’s domination over patrimonial jurisdiction and landlord control over the police. That necessitated the reforms of Alexander II.

scholarly journals Negotiating Socially Optimal Allocations of Resources

2006 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 315-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
U. Endriss ◽  
N. Maudet ◽  
F. Sadri ◽  
F. Toni
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
Multiagent System ◽  
Optimal Allocation ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Allocation Of Resources ◽  
Artificial Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Optimal Allocations

A multiagent system may be thought of as an artificial society of autonomous software agents and we can apply concepts borrowed from welfare economics and social choice theory to assess the social welfare of such an agent society. In this paper, we study an abstract negotiation framework where agents can agree on multilateral deals to exchange bundles of indivisible resources. We then analyse how these deals affect social welfare for different instances of the basic framework and different interpretations of the concept of social welfare itself. In particular, we show how certain classes of deals are both sufficient and necessary to guarantee that a socially optimal allocation of resources will be reached eventually.

The Student Movement in Chile 2011–12: Rearming the Critique of Capitalism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Silva Pinochet
Keyword(s):  
Educational System ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Structural Transformations ◽  
Student Movement ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism

This chapter examines the critique invoked by Chile's student movement in 2011–2012 that challenges the premises of the current spirit of capitalism — that is, the mechanisms of accumulation and its specific justifications in terms of the common good. The chapter draws on the work of Luc Boltanski and Peter Wagner about modernity, capitalism, mobilisation, critique, and structural transformations. It first considers how the critique invoked by the student movement articulates itself by understanding how the educational system in Chile was built and identifying the premises that guided the profound transformation of Chilean society led by the dictatorship. It then explores how the discourse of neo-liberal capitalism emerged in Chile, and which structures or reality tests were built based on that discourse. It also discusses the different nuances contained in the social, artistic and political critique voiced by the student movement.

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