A comment on ‘democratic theory: A preliminary mathematical model.’

*Department of Political Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook. 1"Democratic Organization: A Preliminary Mathematical Model," Public Choice 16 (Fall 1973), 17-26. 2Essai sur l'Application de l'Analyse a la Probabilite des Decisions Rendue a la Pluralite des Voix, Paris, 1876. 3The Theory of Committees and Elections, London: Cambridge University Press, esp. pp. 159-178. As Black has pointed out, Condorcet's discovery of the paradox of cyclical majorities, in significant ways, anticipated Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. (See Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd Edition, New York: Wiley, 1962, and Duncan Black, "An Examination of Professor Arrow's Impossibility Theorem," Vienna, 1968.) The most extensive treatment of Condorcet's mathematical contributions to political and economic theory is Gilles-Gaston Granger, La Mathematique Sociale du Marguis de Condorcet, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956.