-600 Received: from vaxvmsx.babson.edu by corelli.augustana.ab.ca (Mercury 1.13) with ESMTP; Thu, 18 May 95 10:34:44 -600 Received: from cba.bgsu.edu (ceo.bgsu.edu) by vaxvmsx.babson.edu (PMDF V4.2-11 #2542) id <[log in to unmask]>; Thu, 18 May 1995 11:08:39 EST Received: from cio.bgsu.edu (cio.bgsu.edu [129.1.25.2]) by cba.bgsu.edu ([log in to unmask]) with SMTP id LAA23148; Thu, 18 May 1995 11:09:20 -0400 Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 11:08:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Kevin Quinn <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: the term "coercion" and economic theory In-reply-to: <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] CC: [log in to unmask] Reply-To: [log in to unmask] Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT X-Sender: [log in to unmask] On Thu, 18 May 1995, Anthony Brewer wrote: > > She also distinguished cases where the government goes > 'against the common will'. What is a 'common will'? This > takes us into deep waters. I don't know what a common will > is, but I will just comment that one reading of Arrow's > (im)possibility theorem is that there may be no voting > procedure that meets even minimal rquirements of something > that you might call a common will. > Another reading is that social choice theory misconceives politics as utility maximization of pre-formed desiring atoms instead of, e.g., deliberation about the common good, deliberation that is potentially transformative of preferences. If Arrow's Impossibility Stuff makes it hard to understand what we could ever mean by a "common will", this is a problem for Arrow! For a cogent critique of social choice theory along these lines, see the wonderful article "Slinging Arrows at Democracy" by Richard Pildes and Elizabeth Anderson in the Columbia Law Review, 1990.