Monotonicity properties and their adaptation to irresolute social choice rules

Abstract

What is a monotonicity property? How should such a property be recast, so as to apply to voting rules that allow ties in the outcome? Our original interest was in the second question, as applied to six related properties for voting rules: monotonicity, participation, one-way monotonicity, half-way monotonicity, Maskin monotonicity, and strategy-proofness. This question has been considered for some of these properties: by Peleg and Barberà for monotonicity, by Moulin and Pérez et al, for participation, and by many authors for strategy-proofness. Our approach, however, is comparative; we examine the behavior of all six properties, under three general methods for handling ties: applying a set extension principle (in particular, Gärdenfors’ sure-thing principle), using a tie-breaking agenda to break ties, and rephrasing properties via the “t-a-t” approach, so that only two alternatives are considered at a time. In attempting to explain the patterns of similarities and differences we discovered, we found ourselves obliged to confront the issue of what it is, exactly, that identifies these properties as a class. We propose a distinction between two such classes: the “tame” monotonicity properties (which include participation, half-way monotonicity, and strategy proofness) and the strictly broader class of “normal” monotonicity properties (which include monotonicity and one-way monotonicity, but not Maskin monotonicity). We explain why the tie-breaking agenda, t-a-t, and Gärdenfors methods are equivalent for tame monotonicities, and how, for properties that are normal but not tame, set-extension methods can fail to be equivalent to the other two (and may fail to make sense at all).