ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the ways in which a number of social theorists have used the notion of rationality to assess social choices. Each theorist advances one or more conditions as requirements of rationality in social choice, and considers a social choice to be acceptable and worthy of approval only if it satisfies such conditions. The chapter examines some of the rationality requirements proposed, and ask why they should be taken as grounds for supporting or approving a social choice. 'Social choice' is here understood in a technical sense which is common in recent work in political economy and welfare economics. In this sense, the process of social choice may be either a collective decision procedure like a voting system in which each individual contributes his own personal choice between alternative social arrangements. Kenneth Arrow's primary concern in Social Choice and Individual Values is with the possibility of democratic social choice processes issuing in rational social choices.
