Choice Rules (choice + rule)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Is Rule by Majorities Special?

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2010
Hugh Ward
One way of making decisions is for political associates or their representatives to vote on each issue separately in accordance with the majority principle and then take the cumulative outcomes of such majority decision making to define the collective choice for public policy. We call such a system one of majorities rule. Thought of in spatial terms, majorities rule is equivalent to the principle of making decisions according to the issue-by-issue median of voter preferences. If popular control and political equality are core democratic values, they can be rendered as requirements on a collective choice rule, involving resoluteness, anonymity, strategy-proofness and responsiveness. These requirements entail that the collective decision rule be a percentile method. If we then add a requirement of impartiality, as exhibited in a collective choice rule which would be chosen behind a veil of ignorance, then the issue-by-issue median is uniquely identified as a fair rule. Hence, majorities rule is special. Some objections to this line of reasoning are considered. [source]


Towards a general and unified characterization of individual and collective choice functions under fuzzy and nonfuzzy preferences and majority via the ordered weighted average operators

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS, Issue 1 2009
Janusz Kacprzyk
A fuzzy preference relation is a powerful and popular model to represent both individual and group preferences and can be a basis for decision-making models that in general provide as a result a subset of alternatives that can constitute an ultimate solution of a decision problem. To arrive at such a final solution individual and/or group choice rules may be employed. There is a wealth of such rules devised in the context of the classical, crisp preference relations. Originally, most of the popular group decision-making rules were conceived for classical (crisp) preference relations (orderings) and then extended to the traditional fuzzy preference relations. In this paper we pursue the path towards a universal representation of such choice rules that can provide an effective generalization,for the case of fuzzy preference relations,of the classical choice rules. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


The Effects of Stakes and Threat on Foreign Policy Decision-Making

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2000
Allison Astorino-Courtois
Decision research demonstrates that individuals adapt decision processing strategies according to the characteristics of the decision task. Unfortunately, the literature has neglected task factors specific to foreign policy decisions. This paper presents experimental analyses of the effects of the decisional stakes (i.e., salience of the values at issue) and threat (risk of loss on those issues) on decision-makers' information acquisition patterns and choice rules with respect to one of four hypothetical foreign policy scenarios. Contrary to the notion that normative (rational) decision-making is more likely in less dramatic settings, the results indicate that elevated threat encourages rational decision processing, whereas heuristic processing was more prevalent in less threatening situations. Interestingly, the added presence of high stakes magnified both threat effects. These results, although preliminary, suggest that stakes-threat effects are not direct reflections of stress and/or complexity effects, but should be considered independently in foreign policy analyses. [source]