The Probability of Condorcet Cycles and Super-Majority Rules

Yves Balasko (1) , Hervé Crès

1 Department of Economics and Related Studies

Majority voting aggregates individual preference profiles into a binary relation on the set of alternatives. Condorcet cycles are cycles of the aggregated binary relation. We show that the relative volume of the subset of the (n!−1)-simplex that represents profile distributions such that the aggregated preferences display Condorcet cycles is a decreasing function of the super majority levelτbounded by the expressionThis expression shows that Condorcet cycles become rare events for super majority rules larger than 53%.

Domaines: Economies et finances

Yves Balasko, Hervé Crès. The Probability of Condorcet Cycles and Super-Majority Rules. Journal of Public Economic Theory, 1997, 75 (2), pp.237 - 270. ⟨10.1006/jeth.1996.2233⟩. ⟨hal-03458336⟩