Here’s why elections aren’t actually that good at discerning the will of the people | Opinion

How are we going to choose? How do we decide? Especially when we don’t like our options in front of us.

Both major political parties are soon to nominate their candidate for president. Unfortunately, most voters don’t like either of them. That makes for a tough choice.

According to a recent Gallup poll, the leading Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are viewed unfavorably by most registered voters. There may be strong opinions on both sides, but there is clearly no collective will of the people.

In this election year, we would all do well to remember some important principles of government: nobody’s perfect, and there is no perfect way for us to elect our leaders. The academic discipline known as public choice theory shows the limitations of our election process.

Nobel prize-winning economist James Buchanan called public choice theory, “politics without romance.” As with most economic theories, public choice models rest on the assumption that people are guided chiefly by their own self-interests. This includes politicians, that sometimes refer to themselves as public servants.

Buchanan’s work builds on the thoughts and theories of James Madison, who famously said: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” That is clearly not the world we live in. Buchanan demonstrated that government needs to be controlled by constitutional limits.

But even that is very difficult.

Another Nobel prize winner, Kenneth Arrow, published work in the 1950s explaining that even if we control government through our elected representatives, we still won’t make everyone happy. Simply because we hold an election doesn’t mean we can learn the will of the people.

Arrow demonstrated that no perfect voting system exists. This has come to be known as the Impossibility Theorem. Arrow first assumed that society wants a voting scheme that satisfies, at the very least, the social properties of unanimity and transitivity. Unanimity implies that if everyone prefers choice A, to choice B, A will always beat B. Transitivity says that if choice A beats B, and B beats C, then A also beats choice C.

Unfortunately, both properties are easily violated in elections. The property of unanimity can be violated when just one pivotal voter changes his or her preference. Transitivity can be violated by groups.

To see this, suppose voter 1 prefers A to B and B to C, voter 2 prefers B to C and C to A, and voter C prefers C to A and A to B. This is a case of cyclical, not transitive, preferences. The group as a whole prefers A to B, but one majority (2 of 3 voters) prefers B to C. Another majority prefers C to A. As a group these voters violate transitivity.

Arrow proved mathematically that no voting system can satisfy these and other socially desirable properties of voter preferences. No matter what voting scheme we use, one way or another, it will be a flawed mechanism for social choice.

The lesson of political choice theory is that the best we can do is guard against results that promote only the limited self-interest of a few voting groups. That is, government must be limited. We can’t ask much of our elected officials.

The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, knew this. In his seminal work, “The Wealth of Nations,” Smith first shows what leads to prosperity and then demonstrates that the government has only a limited role in that process. He argued that national defense was the prime responsibility of government, followed by the administration of justice, and lastly fulfilled by the construction of only some public works, like roads and canals, that facilitate trade.

Economics shows we can’t expect a perfect leader, and since we are unlikely to ever agree on who that is, we should limit the role of government in our lives.

That’s the most favorable choice.

Peter Crabb is a professor of economics and the director of the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa.