International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences
Volume 2005 (2005), Issue 16, Pages 2555-2563
doi:10.1155/IJMMS.2005.2555

On a continuous majority rule

Won Kyu Kim1 and Kyoung Hee Lee2

1Department of Mathematics Education, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 361-763, Korea
2Division of Liberal Arts, Korea University of Technology & Education, Chunan 330-708, Korea

Received 30 March 2005; Revised 28 June 2005

Copyright © 2005 Won Kyu Kim and Kyoung Hee Lee. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A seminal paper by May characterizes the majority rule in terms of anonymity, neutrality, and positive responsiveness. Since then, there have been many characterizations of the majority rule using different axioms by several authors. In this paper, we will introduce the concept of a continuous majority rule which generalizes the previous social welfare functions beyond the discrete values, and using new axioms, we will give a characterization of the continuous majority rule.