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Individual powers and social consent: an axiomatic approach

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Abstract

We introduce a notion of conditionally decisive powers the exercise of which depends on social consent. Decisive powers, or the so-called libertarian rights, are examples and much weaker forms of powers are covered by our notion. We provide an axiomatic characterization of existence of a system of powers and its uniqueness as well as characterizations of various families of rules represented by systems of powers. Critical axioms are monotonicity, independence and symmetric linkage (person i and i’s issues should be treated symmetrically to person j and j’s issues for at least one linkage between issues and persons).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Korea University, 5-1 Anam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 136-701, Korea

    Biung-Ghi Ju

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  1. Biung-Ghi Ju
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Correspondence to Biung-Ghi Ju.

Additional information

I am grateful to the two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. I am indebted to Christopher Chambers and Yongsheng Xu for their very detailed comments and numerous suggestions on the earlier version of this paper. They were essential for the development of the paper into the current version. I also thank Carsten Nielsen for his comments and discussion on the theories of rights and related literature. All remaining errors are mine.

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Ju, BG. Individual powers and social consent: an axiomatic approach. Soc Choice Welf 34, 571–596 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-009-0418-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-009-0418-0

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