Choose one of the following questions: (1) The plurality voting rule tends to yield a twoparty system (Duverger’s Law). Does this mean that we should replace plurality voting (where it exists) with a proportional representation system? (2) What is strategic voting, and is it a bad thing? Should we seek to discourage strategic voting in our choice of voting rule (or perhaps by some other means)? (3) True or false? Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem demonstrates that the concept of ‘the will of the people’ is incoherent. (4) In order to have a social welfare function (SWF), at least one of Arrow’s assumptions must be dropped (or modified). Which assumption do you think might reasonably be dropped? Explain and defend your choice.? To answer your chosen questions you must choose three of the following readings that best enables you to write a great essay that not only answer the questions but demonstrats that you understand the questions and that your able to write a clear and concise academic philosophy essay. Reference list chose three of the following texts to answer your chosen questions with 1 additional outside academic source. Week 1: Introduction: Why should we vote? And how should we vote? Amartya Sen and Eric Maskin “How Majority Rule Might Have Stopped Donald Trump” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/opinion/sunday/howmajorityrulemighthavestoppeddonaldtrump.html Week 2: The Ethics of Voting Lomasky and Brennan. 2000. “Is there a Duty to Vote? Social Philosophy and Policy 17 (1):62. Optional: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “The Ethics and Rationality of Voting” (just Sections 1 3): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting/ Week 3: The Rationality of Voting Shelly Kagan. 2011. “Do I Make a Difference?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (2):105141. Optional: Paul Meehl. “The Selfish Voter Paradox and the ThrownAway Vote Argument.” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 1130 Week 4: Median Voter Theorem Roger Congleton, “The Median Voter Model” in C.K. Rowley and F. Schneider (Ed). The Encyclopaedia of Public Choice. https://rdc1.net/forthcoming/medianvt.pdf Optional: Tyler Cowen “Why Politics is Stuck in the Middle”: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/business/economy/07view.html
Week 5: Voting Systems Norris, Pippa. “Choosing Electoral Systems: Proportional, Majoritarian, and Mixed Systems.” International Political Science Review. Vol 18, No 3. 1997, pp. 297312. Optional: Farrell, D. 2011. Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction. PalgraveMacmillon. Chapter 4: “The List Systems of Proportional Representation” Optional: Gerrymandering in South Africa: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/apartheidwashelpedbytwisted/ Week 6: Strategic Voting and Parties William Riker. “The TwoParty System and Duverger’s Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science.” The American Political Science Review. Vol. 76, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), pp. 753766 Week 7: Arrow and Social Choice Sen, A. “Arrow and the Impossibility Theorem,” in Sen, Maskin, and Stiglitz (eds) The Arrow Impossibility Theorem Optional: Anscombe’s Paradox, in GEM Anscombe. 1976. “On Frustration of the Majority by Fulfilment of the Majority’s Will.” Analysis 63:4, pp 1618. Week 8: Arrow and Social Choice (cont) Sen, A. “The Informational Basis of Social Choice,” in Sen, Maskin, and Stiglitz (eds) The Arrow Impossibility Theorem Optional: List, C. and Pettit, P. “Aggregating Sets of Judgments: An Impossibility Result.” Economics and Philosophy 18 (1): 89110 (2002). Week 9: Arrow and Epistemic Democracy Mackie, G. 2003. Democracy Defended. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3 “Is Democratic Voting Inaccurate.” Optional: Jules Coleman and John Ferejohn. “Democracy and Social Choice.” Ethics 97 (1):625 (1986).