The information-aggregation approach to political institutions

This paper offers a short survey of recent contributions about the informat ion-aggregation role of political institutions. We argue that these recent developments represent a promising come-back to the Condorcet's original ap proach to political economy and allow to renew the efficiency analysis of a lternative political institutions. In the same way as in the economic liter ature on the price system and the informational rationale for non-market in situtions such as firms, this recent literature that the basic efficiency o f majority-rule voting and other electoral systems needs to be complemented by non-voting political institutions such as political parties, public deb ate and polls. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reser ved. JEL classification: D72; D82.