SOCIAL CHOICE WITH PROCEDURAL PREFERENCES

Participants in an aggregation procedure have preferences not only ove r outcomes but also over procedural features (such as preferring conse nsus, preferring to be in the majority, preferring not having to compr omise, etc.) Such procedural preferences can be expressed in a framewo rk that, contrary to the traditional Arrovian framework, has voting pa tterns rather than outcomes as comparison classes. The extended framew ork helps us to resolve several of the puzzles of social choice theory . The (more or less anti-democratic) political conclusions that some a uthor have been willing to draw from results in the Arrovian framework are shown to rely on formal restrictions that are present in that fra mework but not in the extended framework that is presented here.