ABSTRACT
Three principal categories of behavior have been employed in developing the theory of voting. The first is that voters behave non-strategically — that is, they take no account of the preferences or likely behavior of other voters. The second category is that voters make their choices strategically — that is, they take account of the preferences and likely behavior of others — but in isolation from one another. The third category is that voters make their choices strategically and in collaboration with one another. In order to describe these behavioral assumptions precisely, the chapter introduces the notion of a ‘voting strategy.’ In doing this, it uses ordinary game theory concepts in conjunction with some terminology introduced by Farquharson. A voting strategy is a complete plan of action for casting votes in the voting game determined by a particular agenda and applicable vote counting rules. The strategy set of a voter is the set of all his strategies.
