Arrow's Theorem (2014)

Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by Bromskloss on Friday November 10, 2017 @10:02PM (#15674763)

For us who haven't seen Lijphart's _Patterns of Democracy_, how does one establish such a conclusion, measure the width of political dialogue, for that matter? It would seem that a proper, randomised trial could be difficult to make, or has it been done on a small scale and extrapolated to country size?

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Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by sampo on Friday November 10, 2017 @11:13PM (#15674959)

One measure could be the typical voter turnout in elections. Lower turnout could mean less trust in the political system.

    United States (2016): 56%
    India (2014):         65%
    Germany (2017):       76%
    Denmark (2015):       86%

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Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by yorwba on Saturday November 11, 2017 @03:01AM (#15675433)

Voter turnout essentially reflects whether their vote is worth it. If they think everything is going to get worse no matter how they vote, they won't bother. But the same happens when they think everything will be alright no matter how they vote! So you can't really distinguish between those cases based on voter turnout alone.

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Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by dragonwriter on Saturday November 11, 2017 @02:30AM (#15675358)

The short version is you compare actual existing democracies on multiple axes.

The long version is, well, Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy.

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