An overview of the course
- The heart of the course
- The structure of the course
- Methodology
- The Method
- The bridge between political sciences (first part) and economics (the second part)
- Conclusion
- The heart of the Course
The heart of this Course was the students: kindly, intelligent and full of enthusiasm. Developed interest and curiosity, in order to acquire the new concepts has for both of the docenti the priority during all the lectures.
- The structure of the Course
The fruitful discussions with John, of course, helped me to organize this sophisticated and intellectual structure. I hope, at the end of the course, I managed to give you a profound vision and clear principles that should structure and guide our societies: equity, liberty and freedom.
We constructed each chapter on the various criteria: country criteria, history order, cultural criteria (tradition, norms of behaviour) and political criteria.
a. The country criterion: using this criterion, I made a comparative analysis of different political systems and institutions, in terms of relative advantages. Regarding the political will, I focused on the origins specific to each country studied.
b. The historical criterion and historical order.
The concepts of State, Constitution, Laws, were presented strictly related with the philosophy (the universal principles embodied in the Constitutions), the history and the tradition of different nations selected to serve as examples in this course. The history and the historical order have a strong impact on the shape of institutions.
c. The tradition and culture
The historical order is the way in which the institutions have arisen. I referred to three important traditions: Greek, Modern and Contemporary. I referred to the Greek tradition for the chapters when I explained the origin of laws (the social contract, the political and economic laws) and the various constitutions. I made reference to the Greek, Modern and Contemporary traditions to better explain the process through which the states were formed (forms of States: authoritarian, totalitarian, democratic, Nation-State).
The birth of the Social Contract must be explained through these traditions because philosophical foundations have their roots in these three traditions. The contemporary tradition is fundamental for the study of the economic foundations of Social Contract Theory (Rawls, Nozick, Sen, Harsanyi).
Norms and social values explain one part of social choice. I put in this structure one short chapter on standards of behaviour that explain the functioning of institutions and subsequently the social choice. In this chapter, I stressed the importance of culture and its impact on the formation of political preferences (voting system and voting rules) and social preferences via the organisation of public sectors. (State decisions in health, education and employment fields etc.).
d.The political criterion
I tried to see how political decisions are made and how these reflect and influence the social order in terms of social choice.
3.Methodology
One important element here is the interactive method via debates (Cambridge Union) and the debates about articles.
The personal experiences of the students (international course) was very interesting and help to understand the various reality of social choice in many countries.
The teamwork is another element of this interactive methodology that allows students to leverage their knowledge and experiences through exchange and confrontation of ideas. The teamwork was also used to ask fundamental questions about the issues of course.
The method
I used the method of experimental economics: a theory test in laboratory. Through the experiment in social choice, we wanted to test directly social preferences.
We also conducted in the laboratory a voting game experiment (one of the experiments on Charles Holt’s site) in which we indirectly test game theory (Nash equilibrium).
4. The bridge between the first and second part of Course
Throughout the course, we tried to maintain the link between economics and other social sciences: history, sociology and political sciences. A basic idea is as follows: we see that throughout history. institutions, through laws and constitutions, have expressed social preferences; but we want to know how they can be aggregated into collective choice. Precisely in the second part of the course on the economic theory of Arrow, the Impossibility Theorem, Gibbard and Sen’s paradoxes and the voting paradoxes (Condorcet winner, Condorcet Loser, Alabama Paradox) are seen as analysis. On the other hand the method of experimental economics can be applied to all areas including the political sciences.
Most theories of voting tried to avoid the utility (no mention of utility):
- no utility to attach for the preference for candidate.
- How much utility you put in this vote? (utility for each vote and each candidate).
- The theories of voting described only the general properties of systems but not the particular properties (take in the consideration the distribution of preferences but avoid the interpersonal comparisons).
- For these theories is more important the ranking or the ordering of the preferences.
The examples of voting rules (single winner and multiple winners in the majority and proportional systems). The different rules give the different results. I tried to see how political decisions are made and how these reflect and influence the social choice for societies. Through the analysis, we investigated the weight of social choice for the citizens and for the political decision in France, Italy, UK and USA. In the real life all institutional decisions will play in the area of trade-off between efficiency and social choice.
I extend the set of institutional decisions considered to include the following:
the process of the state decisions and the political key decisions.
Conclusion
The question of aggregation is the more complex and complicated question…
Which kind of aggregation is possible?
There are ways of aggregation even if proved difficult: to make some conditions where release of other conditions.
The difficulty of the aggregation of social preferences into social choice is that the people have different preferences- “People are different” and said Professor Hey it’s impossible to measure the happiness”.
It is impossible to aggregate preferences.