A unifying impossibility theorem (Q382333)

The authors demonstrate a common principle underlying a number of impossibility theorems in the social choice literature, thus providing an intuitive foundation on which these theorems can be unified. The three axioms in question are the following: \textit{Strong unanimity}: Only the unique weakly Pareto dominant alternative is chosen from the set of all alternatives, whenever there is one. \textit{Independence of infeasible alternatives}: Choices from subsets depend only on the preferences over the subsets. \textit{Independence of losing alternatives}: An alternative is chosen from a subset if and only if it is chosen out of all social alternatives whenever alternatives chosen from the universal set are available in the subset. The authors prove that any social choice correpondence that satisfies these three axioms is serially dictatorial. Next they show that Arrow's impossibility theorem, the Muller-Satterthwaite theorem, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, the Jackson-Srivastava theorem, the Grether-Plott theorem and the Dutta-Jackson-le Breton theorem are corollaries of their theorem. This demonstrates a common principle underlying a number of impossibility theorems in social choice theory. The various axioms in the classical impossibility theorems are different interpretations or justifications of their three axioms.