ABSTRACT
Recent years have witnessed on increasing recognition of the importance of the entire problem of social choice. One aspect of this recognition is the appearance and growth of a still small body of literature which is devoted to the construction of analytic models of democratic choice. Prominent examples include the work of Black (1958), Black and Newing (1951), Buchanan and Tullock (1962), Downs (1957) and Tullock (1965, 1967). There are several common threads in this literature. First, the analysis is based upon the assumption of “rational” voters who have well defined preferences. Second, the general methodological approach involves choice between paired comparisons which are sometimes interpreted as competing candidates or parties. Third, much of the work can be characterized as being a one dimensional “spatial” model. 2
