Journal Article On Constructing Generalized Voting Paradoxes Get access Rajat Deb Rajat Deb Southern Methodist University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 43, Issue 2, June 1976, Pages 347–351, https://doi.org/10.2307/2297329 Published: 01 June 1976

[A social decision function operates on individual weak orderings to produce acyclic social preference. The structure of a general neutral monotonic SDF is studied. It is shown to be characterized by the veto, if individual indifference is banned. With such indifference present, the characterization is by a veto structure, a hierarchy embracing all individuals. The reason for the interest in acyclicity [21, 22] is that it averts the voting paradox, permitting a choicefrom each subset of alternatives. This is for the finite case. When that assumption is dropped, an infinite ascending sequence of preferences prevents a choice. It is shown that this last phenomenon need not be prohibited along with cycles; the absence of such social sequences is implied by their absence from individual preferences.]