An overview and re-interpretation of paradoxes of responsiveness

Abstract

One of the most obvious desiderata of democratic decision-making is that the political outcomes (policies, elected persons, legislation) be responsive to popular opinions. In representative forms of governance the responsiveness is not expected to pertain to every single outcome, but the very idea of going to the people seems to presuppose some degree of responsiveness. In social choice theory several notions that aim to capture aspects of responsiveness have been introduced and related to other desiderata of social choice. We shall discuss the most common notions and discuss their relevance in democratic decision making. We shall also look at the paradoxes related to non-responsiveness from a novel angle, viz. we try to determine their significance to the multiple criteria decision making (MCDM). It turns out that some methods of aggregating criterion performances of policy alternatives can be ruled out because of their bizarre behavior under some decision settings.