SOPHISTICATED VOTING OVER MULTIDIMENSIONAL CHOICE SPACES.

In a democratic society, many social choice are made by means of a competitive political process in which the final choice between competing alternatives is by vote or ballot by the members of some constituency or representative body. Among the problems which might arise for consideration in this manner might be that of deciding the levels at which each oft set of governmental activities shall be run; or the amounts to be provided of each of a variety of governmental services or public goods; or the values at which each of several policy instruments shall be set. A theory or model of the political process capable of explaining public sector behavior with respect to this class of problems would be of considerable interest and potential applicability. In societies with bicameral legislature or separate executive and legislative branches, elected separately and perhaps from different constituencies, the decisive coalitions are more complicated still. Conditions for voting equilibrium in these complex institution are presumably quite different from those for an equilibrium under simple majority rule, yet they have received little attention in the voting literature. It may be that democratic institution based on majority rule are indeed in a perpetual slate of turmoil, with new majorities continually forming to overturn the current the status quo, and the system unable to achieve a viable resolution to the underlying choice problem.