THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE – A STUDY ON RATIONALITY IN COLLECTIVE DECISIONS

Abstract

The objective of this work is to make an effective contribution to interdisciplinary research in the areas of social epistemology, law, philosophy, economics and political theory, which, in our present day of uncertainty and increasingly complex scenarios, demand from agents and legislators precise justifications of their decision-making processes to implement public policies and collective actions that effectively promote the common good in our democracies. It is, ultimately, a pragmatic proposal in search for a solution that best fits our social reality in face of the crisis of representativeness and the apparent failure of the current mechanisms of election in contemporary democratic socie­ties. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully evaluate the established conditions of rationality, considering the formal requirements of logical performance, as they were historically developed in the theory of collective choice, aiming at a viable answer that not only represents a sum of individual choices, but can in fact translate a true social choice.­

Keywords: Social Choice. Rational Choice. Kenneth Arrow, Legitimacy, John Rawls, Amartya Sen.