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Only a Dictatorship is Efficient or Neutral Jean-Pierre Benoit, London Business School Lewis A. Kornhauser, New York University Download the Paper (PDF format) - December 28, 2006 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing. ABSTRACT: Social choice theory understands a voting rule as a mapping from preferences over possible outcomes to a specific choice or choices. However, actual election procedures often do not have this structure. Rather, in a typical election, although the outcome is an assembly comprising several people occupying different seats, voters cast their ballots for individual candidates, and these candidates have their votes tallied on a seat-by-seat basis. We prove two theorems: the only efficient seat-by-seat procedure is a dictatorship and the only neutral seat-by-seat procedure is a dictatorship. SUGGESTED CITATION: Jean-Pierre Benoit and Lewis A. Kornhauser, "Only a Dictatorship is Efficient or Neutral" (December 28, 2006). New York University School of Law. New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers. Paper 49. http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/49 | REPOSITORY HOME  | SEARCH  | MY ACCOUNT  | NELLCO HOME | Powered by bepress.