Condorcet domains satisfying Arrow's single-peakedness (Q2338669): Difference between revisions

Condorcet paradox displays voters' preferences such that majority rule leads to an intransitive group preference. An approach to tackle this difficulty arises by restraining the set of preferences available to the voters. Condorcet domains are sets of linear orders with the property that, whenever the preferences of all voters belong to this set, the majority relation of any profile with an odd number of voters is transitive. \textit{D. Black}'s [``On the rationale of group decision-making'', J. Political Economy 56, No, 1, 23--34 (1948); The theory of committees and elections. Cambridge: University Press (1958; Zbl 0091.15706)] singled-peaked domains are important Condorcet domains. \textit{K. J. Arrow} [Social choice and individual values. New York, NY: Wiley; London: Chapman \& Hall (1951; Zbl 0984.91513), second edition (1963)] introduced a local, and weaker, version of Black's singled-peakedness, and the resulting Arrow's domains are still Condorcet domains. Arrow's domains which are maximal Condorcet domains are the main subject of this paper. It is shown that all maximal Black's domains on the set of m alternatives are isomorphic, but in contrast a variety of maximal Arrow's domains is exposed, and their recursive structure is discovered. All maximal Arrow's domains have cardinality $2m-1$; \textit{H. Raynaud} [Paradoxical results from Inadas conditions for majority rule. Technical report, Stanford University Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (1981)] already proved that this cardinality is less than or equal to $2m-1$. In the line of a characterization of \textit{C. Puppe} [J. Econ. Theory 176, 55--80 (2018; Zbl 1419.91276)] for Black's domains, Arrow's domains are characterized here by two conditions, connectedness and minimal richness. It is then proved that a domain is a maximal Black's domain if and only if it is a maximal Arrow's domain and contains two completely reversed orders. Finally, maximal Arrow's domains are classified for $m\leq 5$ alternatives.