Concept

Quota rule

An aggregation rule accepting a proposition when at least a stated number of voters do. Majority and unanimity are the two extremes, and raising the quota buys consistency by allowing the body to take no view at all.

Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

Hamilton's method on 27 seats and 5 regions. A worksheet of populations, exact quotas, floors, remainders and the seats Hamilton's method awards to 5 regions.

The seat that vanishes when the house grows

Twenty-seven whole seats have to be divided between five regions whose exact shares are 15.417, 7.209, 1.755, 1.431 and 1.188. Every rule for rounding those five numbers breaks something, and the instance drawn here breaks all three of the classical ways at once.

applied · Apportionment

Four ways out, and what each costs

An impossibility theorem lists conditions and says no rule has them all. That leaves exactly as many escapes as there are conditions, each of them a real institution — a dictator, a two-stage procedure, a supermajority, a restricted agenda — and each escape's price can be counted rather than argued about.

applied · Judgement aggregation

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Alabama paradox Apportionment Counting argument Dictatorship Divisor method Domain restriction Exhaustive search Impossibility theorem Judgement aggregation Majority rule Pigeonhole principle Remainder

All concepts