ABSTRACT
The impossibility theorems of social choice pose a challenge to planning theory because they exhibit dilemmas that seem to seriously restrict the possibilities of designing planning and decision-making institutions that are simultaneously democratic, dialogical, efficient, and consistent. A sensible response should also consider whether the dilemmas are real or purely theoretical artefacts, it should search for fruitful ways of taking the dilemmas into account if they are found to be real, and give the status of communicative planning against the background of the insights from social choice theory. A generation of scholarly scrutiny has shown the three theorems of Gibbard and Satterthwaite, Arrow, and Sen to be remarkably robust, so a blanket rejection of social choice theory on the basis of the above critical points would be premature. Real problems disappear with a shift of theoretical framework. Planning and decision-making processes in formally democratic societies have been studied a number of times without the use of social choice theory.
