ABSTRACT
Enthusiasm for perfecting society through public intervention, therefore, should be tempered by awareness that public intervention arises from imperfect collective choice and may require challenging implementation efforts. Policy analysts should exercise caution in advocating public intervention in private choice. From social choice theory, which focuses on the operation of voting rules and other mechanisms of collective choice, the reader learn of the inherent imperfectability of democracy. Perhaps the closest a society could come to direct democracy would be the election of an executive who would serve subject to recall. As long as the paradox of voting was viewed as a peculiar result of a particular voting scheme, scholars could treat it as a curiosity. At the heart of this indeterminacy lies what is often referred to as the paradox of voting. The danger of tyranny by the majority makes democracy by referenda generally undesirable; the complexity of modern public policy makes it impractical.
