Social choice theory

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Social choice theory is a branch of welfare economics that seeks to extend the theory of rational choice to collective decision-making. Social choice studies the behavior of different mathematical procedures (social welfare functions) used to combine individual preferences into a coherent whole. It contrasts with political science in that social choice theory is a normative field that studies how a society can make good decisions, whereas political science is a descriptive field that observes how societies actually do make decisions. While social choice began as a branch of economics and decision theory, it has since received substantial contributions from mathematics, philosophy, political science, and game theory. Real-world examples of social choice rules include constitutions and parliamentary procedures for voting on laws, as well as electoral systems; as such, the field is occasionally called voting theory. It is closely related to mechanism design, which uses game theory to model...

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