A responsive voting system

To say that a democratic system of government ought to be responsive to the opinions of the citizens sounds like a truism which could hardly be expected to generate much controversy. Yet, the notion of responsiveness turns out to be open to several nonequivalent interpretations: Condorcet-consistency, monotonicity, invulnerability to the no-show paradox, to name the most important ones. Several results have been achieved to establish incompatibilities between these properties. We shall review some of these and discuss some similar notions and their relationships with those just mentioned.Received: 5 August 2003, Accepted: 19 March 2004, JEL Classification: D70This work has been supported by the Academy of Finland and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation. The author is grateful to Donald G. Saari for perceptive comments on an earlier version. Also the comments of Elina Kestilä, Kai A. Konrad, Maria Suojanen, Matti Wiberg and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.