Tulllock thoughts on democracy

Democracy is frequently referred to as a system of majority voting. Granted, the

last election in the United States the opposing candidate received more popular

votes than the winner, and neither received a majority of popular votes because of

the existence of other candidates, it is surprising that our system is called that." Of

course the winner did get a majority both in the Supreme Court and in the electoral

college. The loser got a majority in the Florida Supreme Court. 1

Why do we call it "majority voting" when . . .

The failure to get a majority in the popular vote is not particularly uncommon.

Lincoln, for example, got only 35 percent of the popular vote and if one of the

three of his opponents in the election, Douglas, had met him in a 2 candidate

election, he would have won. The 1912 election, once again, had a winner who

received less than half the popular votes. In Wilson's case he had two opponents,

either one of which could have beaten him if the other had not been present. The

current government in Canada received less than half the popular vote and, except

in wartime, no British government has been elected by more half the voters since

1920. In both of these cases, of course, the winner had more than half of the

representatives in Parliament. During its long reign in India, the Congress party

never received a majority of the popular vote. Normally it received less than 45

percent.

Another and interesting case is the election of 1960. Nixon had more popular votes

than Kennedy but lost in the electoral college. The fact that Nixon had more

popular votes, although not a majority of all votes, is almost a secret. 2

The election of 1960 is interesting and here I foreshadow the major part of this

the selection processes of the two parties. It is reasonably certain that Johnson

could have beaten Kennedy . All of this does not indicate the system is inferior, but

it does suggest that we stop calling it majority voting.

The problem of more than two alternatives

As on my readers will know, there are two general types of democracy, one

But to return to my main subject, the reader will have noticed that in each of the

cases with a winner who did not have a majority of the votes, more than two

alternatives were presented to the voters. With only two candidates or proposals

before the voters these problems do not occur. Unfortunately, there are many

people who would like to be the president and many ways which the government

income could be spent.

In the real world, it is likely that the system is confronted with more than two

alternatives and it must either cut them down to two by some means or be willing to

accept a candidate or proposition chosen by less than a majority. Of course it may

happen that although there are three candidates or proposals one of him gets more

than half of the votes. But we should not have a system which depends on that

The paradox: from Condorcet to Black and Arrow

This problem has been known for a very long time and procedures to either simply

take the one that has the most votes or reduce the number of alternatives to two

and then vote on the those two are orthodox. Unfortunately, none of these

procedures really overcome the problem. Shortly before the French Revolution

produced system which avoided that Paradox but introduced another.

This was of course the period of the great expansion of democracy and, perhaps as

a result of the enthusiasm for democracy, the problem was largely forgotten

although some mathematicians seem to have known about it. In the mid-19th

century, Lewis Carroll rediscovered the paradox and did considerable work on it

without finding a solution. He too was largely forgotten and the problem was

rediscovered by Black who also discovered that he had predecessors lost in the

obscurity of minor mathematical publications.

Black succeeded in reviving interest in the issue which is a little paradoxical since it

is obvious he did not like the idea of democracy having paradoxes. Working with

Newing he produced a proof that this paradox could not the avoided if there were

more than two alternatives. 3 Notably he did not put out his work as a criticism of

democracy because he was a firm believer in democracy. Nevertheless careful

reading of his book with Newing shows the impossibility of avoiding the Paradox

except in special cases.

While Black and Newing were working, Arrow produced a general proof that the

paradox cannot be avoided in the general case. 4 This was his famous general

impossibility theorem. Notably it was only a remarkably long delay in the refereeing

process which prevented the Black and Newing paper from being published before

Arrow.

In the early days of research in public choice, papers dealing with the paradox

were a major component of papers submitted to me as editor of the journal. I think

that most of these papers were inspired by desire to avoid the paradox or at least

to minimize it. If this was the inspiration, it failed. The paradox continues and indeed

I have invented a much simpler although less elegant proof. 5

After considerable delay I discovered a proof that the problem was not

nonexistent, but of less importance than had been thought. If the voting preceded in

the usual way of legislatures with anyone free to introduce an amendment is, it

would precede to an outcome very close to the center of the cloud of individual

optima. A dictatorial chairman, however, could lead the votes to almost anywhere

he wished. Since the usual procedure is not involving a dictatorial chairman, this

meant that the voting normally would lead to a more or less satisfactory outcome.

Professor Arrow, in a very kind letter, accepted in the bulk of my reasoning but

pointed out that the latter part was not really mathematically strict. He was right,

but the reasoning was very strong even if not perfect, mathematicians standpoint. 6

What are fans of democracy to do?

The end result of all of this work is most disappointing for proponents of

proponents of democracy we should all the unhappy about it. As far as I can see,

however, the usual response is not to be sad, but to sweep the problem under the

rug. Psychologically this is no doubt an optimal response, but it seems to me that

scholars should busily search for some better way of dealing with the paradox. I

frankly admit I have not found one, but the point of this article is to attempt to

interest other scholars in a revival of voting problem, so important in the early days

of Public Choice, but normally today not even mentioned in the average issue or,

indeed, in the average 10 issues.

This is particularly surprising granted that intellectuals are currently vigorously

think particularly interested in eliminating paradoxes in democracy. The new

arguments for majority voting, and the authors normally refer to majority voting

rather than simply democracy fall into two categories. The first is the allegation that

democracy's tend to produce capitalistic economies and hence are prosperous.

Dictatorships are allegedly less efficient in the economic field.

In the first place, economists have long known for (or at least many of them have)

that a capitalistic system is a better method and of producing prosperity than a

centrally directed one. In the last few years most intellectuals have adopted this

idea. Note however, that except for a certain number of "reactionary" economists

this idea was not popular among intellectuals 50 years ago. Warren Nutter

undertook a major research project in communist statistics and decided that the

rate of growth of the Soviet Union was not in any way remarkable. Indeed it was

about that of United States and markedly lower than that of Japan.

As a result he was practically drummed out of the economic profession. Note that

efforts to duplicate his research turned out to be surprisingly similar although the

CIA which funded them never overtly admitted that. It was however not just the

CIA which disagreed. To repeat, Nutter's career was more or less terminated in

the economic profession. The University of Virginia did not give him significant pay

raises and moved him to an inconvenient office. He could not go anywhere else

because other universities also thought that he was following his ideology and not

his science.

This was a personal tragedy for Nutter and a policy tragedy for many governments.

The view that economic progress required central control by someone not

hampered by democratic mechanisms was widely held. Many of the people who

felt this way remained in favor of democracy for reasons other than its economic

effects. Nevertheless, the recent view sweeping intellectuals that democracy works

better in economics than a communist dictatorship is recent. Further, as far as I can

see, like the earlier enthusiasm for communist dictatorships in the economic field, it

was based on nothing more than one of the waves of enthusiasm that tend to sweep

the intellectual classes, although the collapse of the old order in Russia undoubtedly

contributed

If we look at the real world, Japan, Germany, France, and India are all

of any significant country. Speaking for myself, I tend to distrust communist

statistics, but observation on a recent trip to China indicates it is very much better

off than it was not too long ago, at the end of the great proletarian cultural

revolution.

Democracy and peace

Another recent argument for democracy is that democracies are relatively peaceful.

This began with view that democracies did not engage in aggressive wars.

Apparently, after a while, some intellectuals read the history of 19th-century in

which democracy's conquered much of the world, and the claim was reduced to

one in which democracy's do not fight other democracies. The original claim was

particularly surprising since many of the intellectuals who made it were American

citizens and therefore should have been aware that United States had seized is

present geographic area by a series of minor but certainly aggressive wars.

Consider the reduced claim that democracies rarely fight other democracies.

During a rather long period in which democracies were rare and hence had little

opportunity to fight each other this was undoubtedly true. Still it should be kept in

mind that in 1914 it could easily have been argued that both England and Imperial

Germany were democracies, indeed the major undemocratic country in the war

was Russia. Of course at that time all the monarchies were moving toward

democracy and England and Germany were much farther along than Russia. The

end product of the war was that what progress Russia had made towards

democracy was canceled and one of the world's worst autocracies put in its place.

The dissolution of Austria-Hungary was disastrous by any standard. The history of

the fragments was complicated, but on the whole a setback for democracy. Since

shortly after the war Italy became a dictatorship, albeit a rather mild one as

compared to Russia, it is not very obvious that the allied victory expanded

democracy.

World War II had a very nasty dictatorship, the Soviet Union, on the same side

with United States and England. Indeed it did most of the fighting. Japan had an

elected legislature and the Emperor's powers were very modest. It seems likely that

they should be regarded as a constitutional monarchy rather than as a dictatorship.

The end product of the war was of course the great expansion of the Soviet

dictatorship so that Europe in 1945 was less democratic than it had been in 1930.

Once again to refer to the war as a war for democracy is misleading

I have been presenting all of this material which could be regarded as an attack on

democracy, not in order to run down democracy but indicate that the enthusiasm

for democracy in the last 10 years and for communist dictatorship in the early '50s

were simply examples of the instability of intellectual opinion. Personally I prefer

weaker than those for a capitalistic economy. Further, when you look around the

world you realize that Prince Bismarck's invention, the welfare state is largely

could be an argument against democracy. It is however quite possible to feel as I

do that in spite of its defects, democracy is better than the currently known

So far this paper has not had any dominant theme except that it shows little

enthusiasm for democratic methods of government. I have to admit that I am not

enthusiastic about democracy. Like Churchill, I favor it over its current

competitors, but it seems to me that we should be looking for something better.

The purpose of this note is first to deal with certain popular arguments for

I find when talking to people about improvements in government the first response

with respect to any idea is to ask, "Is it more democratic than our present

methods?" If it were it would have the same defects. It could be, however, that

there is another form of government which has all of the advantages of our

democracy but adds something on to it. I have no suggestions at the moment but I

believe that seeking a better form of government then democracy is sensible policy.

It may be of course that the better form is a modification of our present democracy.

If we look around the world we observe some democratic governments that are

more successful than others. In my opinion the Swiss government is not only the

best democratic government in the world but also the best government. Thus

copying it would be an improvement even though I am great admirer of our

Constitution. Melding the two might be an excellent idea. But I hope that the public

choice scholars can do better.

But let me return to my main theme which is problems with our present democracy.

I will begin by once again turning to either the Arrow theorem, or the Black

Newing proof that the voting process has paradoxes.

Roughly speaking, simple majority voting works very well if they're only two

alternatives. When there are more the outcome may be close to random. In

general, in democracies there are more than two people who would like given job

and they're more than two policy suggestions for any given problem. In most

functioning democracies these multiple choices are winnowed down to two which

are then voted on. It is not obvious that one of the alternatives eliminated in the

winnowing down process could not get a majority over whoever wins in the

election limited to the two survivors.

Of course the winnowing down process does not always get the final choice

pattern down to two alternatives. I above mentioned cases in the American system

in which no one got a majority because there were more than 2 alternatives which

attracted significant votes. If one looks at policy choices we once again find a

number of alternatives offered which are then winnowed down to two by

successive votes in accord with the procedural rules in use in that particular voting

body. Granted the prospect of paradox, it is by no means obvious that one of the

other alternatives which lost earlier could not be the winner selected by the

operation of the rules of order.

To take a simple and artificial set of choices, suppose that the various alternatives

actually offered as amendments in the Senate are: A, B, C, D, E, and F. Note that

these are only a set of amendments offered on the floor of the Senate. If we

considered those offered in committee, the set of amendments to the House version

and what was done in the conference committee, probably at least 25 or 30

possible variants are proposed at one or another stage in the process. One of these

numerous alternatives could be capable getting majority against the winner in the

formal vote. Suppose for example that the votes are taken F against E, the winner

against D. and so forth. This leads to B winning, but that B as never been offered

against E, so it's perfectly possible that E could beat B but not beat D.

This is simply an example of the standard possibility of circular majorities. We have

no real measure of how often it happens. The first effort to find out how often was

a joint article by Colin Campbell and myself which generated random preferences

for a large body of synthetic voters in the computer memory and then tested them

for cycles.

The method is obviously crude but the only improvements on our design have been

based on the same method but with larger collections of random numbers assigned

to voters. Obviously, we need improvements but it is clear that the cycles are

reasonably common. In this paper, I will make no effort to find out how common

they are. I simply assume that they sometimes happen, and when they do, the

outcome is not one we should respect. Of course, if they were rare we could

regard the possibility as a minor defect, and go ahead. If they were common they

would not be a minor but a major defect. Unfortunately we do not know.

But let us go on to the candidates selected by election. In addition to the paradoxes

mentioned above, in the United States there is another very serious problem. In the

2000 election year, 31 members of the House of Representatives chose not to run

-- presumably mainly in order to retire. Of the remaining to 394, all but 11 were

re-elected. It is sometimes said that the security of tenure held by members of the

House of Representatives is greater than that held by members of the House of

Lords.

The basic reason for this security is that the members of the House are able to get

the federal government to expend great resources for their re-election. They have

large staffs, considerable free travel, access to a free television studio in the

basement of the capital, and many other advantages. There doesn't seem to be any

exact accounting for this money, but I asked a professional lobbyist how much he

thought it was worth and he gave a figure of two and half million per congressman

per election. It's obvious why they are so secure and obvious why they want to

restrict campaign expenditures by potential opponents.

Senators do not have as firm a grasp on their offices as the members of the House

and a President probably even less. In the case of the President resources spent by

the federal government to get him re-elected are immense. It is probably true that

resource expenditures have the highest payoff when there is little other information.

Thus, the value of these large government expenditures would be highest for the

House. It should be noted that in the 19th century when these expenditures were

not as large congressman normally served only one term.

This leads us perform a mental experiment. There must be several thousand people

who would like to be President and who think at least a little bit of running. Most of

them drop the idea almost immediately, but some will give it further consideration

and talk to people about the possibilities. At this stage we're down to something

like the 50 possible candidates. They "test the water." There was a senator

unknown to me who recently visited Washington to a give a speech to an

organization which he thought might support him. The Washington Post reported

him as " testing the water" and said he received an enthusiastic response. This put

him a bit above many of the above 50, perhaps in the top 10 or 20.

At this point he would begin trying harder to get support from one of the parties,

from special-interest groups, etc. he would also begin trying to raise money.

Eventually he would either be nominated or not. Whether he became President

would depend on who else was nominated and, in particular, how many were

nominated. The prospect that somebody who could beat the eventual winning

candidate was eliminated early in the game is certainly good. In other words the

paradox exists here as well as in the choice of issues. Indeed it appears to even

stronger here.

This rather lengthy essay has raised a number of difficulties of a fundamental nature

with democracy. They do not prove that democracy is inferior to any other given

system, but they do indicate that we should substitute hard research for enthusiasm.

In recent years there's been very little effort to solve these problems. I would like to

encourage my audience to go back to the fundamentals.

As a sort of study aid for people looking for improvements in the structure of

government I should like to list some suggestions that already been made. This is

not intended to be a complete list of possible changes, but only a set which have

been made but have received little or no attention. I think they should be given

more attention by students in this field, but I hope that someone will invent even

better ones.

I begin with Clarke's demand revealing process. This has had more attention than

the others including a complete issue of public choice devoted to it. As the reader

may know, I have done some work in this area and am an enthusiast for the

system. It permits the voter to express not only which alternative he prefers, but

also how much he prefers it. The outcome might lead to a minority of intense voters

defeating a majority of near indifferent voter.

My second proposal is Earl Thompson's suggestion to put individual policy changes

up, in essence, to a bid. Among other things this permits compensation of the

losers. The third proposal is Hanson's betting procedure in which the voter may be

rewarded for favoring a decision for certain proposals if ex post an impartial

commission finds that it adds to the national welfare.

All three of these methods are radically different from our current voting

procedures. Indeed, it could be argued that they're not really voting at all.

Nevertheless they are a start. Note that all three permits a minority to win over a

majority. Also, all three of these suggestions are subject to the Arrow, Newing and

Black problem. If there are more than two alternatives, the order in which they are

taken up may lead to different outcomes. Voting on all alternatives at the same time

may also lead to different outcomes. As in other cases where these problems arise,

voting on the order of taking them up to also leads to paradoxes. Still these are a

start in investigating radically different ways of making decisions, and they're not

monarchical.

These are variants on the actual voting procedure. Other possible changes involve

the problem of who can vote. Dennis Mueller suggested that voters to given a short

examination before being permitted to vote. The intent, of course, is to restrict the

voting to people who at least know some elementary facts about the government. I,

myself, perhaps influenced by my knowledge of China, have suggested an

examination for the candidates. Following the Chinese precedent the examination

for different offices would be of different degrees of difficulty. A man who would

fail the president's exam might well pass that for alderman. Again following the

Chinese precedent the examination would leave several candidates for each office

to be selected by the voters. They would remain in control but the number of

alternatives would be reduced. If the examination were well-designed the

alternatives would also be improved.

It is not obvious that one man one vote is ideal. Corporations give different people

different votes depending on how many shares they own. As an aside, this system

was originated by Lord Clive. He not only started the British Empire in India by his

victory at Plassey, but he also, in an unsuccessful effort to control the Honorable

Company, caused changes from one man one vote to one share one vote. It's not

at all obvious which is the best system. I find, however, that most people are

strongly opposed to, let us say, the one vote for every dollar in taxes paid. Whether

this is merely opposition to a new idea or a rational position, I do not know. When

I talk to people about it their objections normally are not well reasoned. Indeed

they normally offer no reason at, all, merely opposition.

There are other proposals for giving different people to different numbers of votes.

Nevil Schute wrote a whole novel, In the Wet, devoted to this idea, and one of the

richest men in United States - Hunt -- also produced a book on it. The additional

votes could be distributed in terms of payment for services. For a modest example,

suppose any war veteran who actually got shot at gets an extra vote.

Another radical idea is to permit people to hold their votes in abeyance. I could, for

example, decide not to vote for president in 2004 and then cast two votes in 2008.

Or perhaps I could have credit, testing two votes in 2004 and none in 2008.

Perhaps to charge interest, I might be prohibited from casting votes for Senators in

2008.

But let us consider some undemocratic ideas. Gibbon thought the period of the

adoptive Emperor's in Rome was the happiest in human history. Mexico used a

somewhat similar system from 1931 to 1987. It also had a reasonably good

government by the rather moderate standards of Mexican government's. For a list

of other governments which are not democratic, I suggest my forthcoming

"Undemocratic Governments".

The reader should keep in mind that it is not necessary for the government form to

be suitable for a nation state. It may be suitable only for use in individual

governments which form only a part of the nation. If these were undemocratic, they

would nevertheless be subject to popular control because of the possibility of

moving. Note that some government functions cannot conveniently be broken up.

In military matters economies of scale require large government units. There are

other areas where breaking up government is unlikely to be successful. As an

obvious example consider the regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum. No

doubt the reader can think of many others. Nevertheless, pre-1870 Germany

seems to have been pretty well governed although none of the constituent

monarchies were democratic.

I do not claim that any of the alternative governments I have listed is ideal.

Nevertheless, I think they should receive careful study. Further, I think we should

look for other forms of government. There is no natural law which says we cannot

invent new forms of government which are better than the current sample. It is to

encourage the reader to engage in such radical thought that this essay is dedicated.