Consistent collective decisions under majorities based on difference of votes

Abstract

The main criticism to the aggregation of individual preferences under majority rules refers to the possibility of reaching inconsistent collective decisions from the election process. In these cases, the collective preference includes cycles and even could prevent the election of any alternative as the collective choice. The likelihood of consistent outcomes under a class of majority rules constitutes the aim of this paper. Specifically, we focus on majority rules that require certain consensus in individual preferences to declare an alternative as the winner. Under majorities based on difference of votes, the requirement asks to the winner alternative to obtain a difference in votes with respect to the loser alternative taking into account that individuals are endowed with weak preference orderings. Same requirement is asked to the restriction of these rules to individual linear preferences.