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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz Jan 2011

Collective Choice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

This short nontechnical article reviews the Arrow Impossibility Theorem and its implications for rational democratic decisionmaking. In the 1950s, economist Kenneth J. Arrow proved that no method for producing a unique social choice involving at least three choices and three actors could satisfy four seemingly obvious constraints that are practically constitutive of democratic decisionmaking. Any such method must violate such a constraint and risks leading to disturbingly irrational results such and Condorcet cycling. I explain the theorem in plain, nonmathematical language, and discuss the history, range, and prospects of avoiding what seems like a fundamental theoretical challenge to the possibility …


Redesigning Global Trade Institutions, John Linarelli Jan 2011

Redesigning Global Trade Institutions, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

This is a draft of an essay for the symposium, 2021: International Law Ten Years from Now, held by the Southwestern Journal of International Law in cooperation with the International Law Association (American Branch) Weekend West. The essay deals with two questions. First, what is to be of the WTO and world trade institutions generally? It examines the rise of regionalism in international trade agreements and possible roles for variable geometry for the WTO. The essay critiques proposals to move towards (or back to) plurilateralism for the WTO. Second, what should trade agreements do? This question goes to the core …