Condorcet paradox
Paradoja de Condorcet
- Date
- 1785 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
In his 'Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix' (1785), Condorcet showed that collective majority preferences can form cycles (A beats B, B beats C, but C beats A) even though each voter has coherent individual preferences, so majority rule does not always produce a consistent winner.
The Catalan philosopher Ramon Llull had already described an equivalent voting cycle in the 13th century, in a manuscript that remained lost and unknown until its rediscovery in the 21st century, so it could not have influenced Condorcet.
What it led to
- The founding of modern social choice theory
- Arrow's impossibility theorem (1951), of which it is a special case