From awodey@cmu.edu Thu Oct 19 17:30:32 2006
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:30:32 -0400
From: Steve Awodey <awodey@cmu.edu>
To: Steve Awodey <awodey@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: list

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\f0\fs24 \cf0 Christian List, London School of Economics\
Philosophy Colloquium, October 30\
"Deliberation, Single-Peakedness, and the Possibility of Meaningful Democracy"\
\
Majority cycling and related social choice paradoxes are often thought to threaten the  meaningfulness of democracy. But deliberation can prevent majority cycles - not by inducing unanimity, which is unrealistic, but by bringing preferences closer to single-peakedness. We present the first empirical test of this hypothesis, using data from Deliberative Polls. Comparing preferences  before and after deliberation, we find increases in proximity to single-peakedness. The increases are greater for lower versus higher salience issues and for individuals who seem to have deliberated more versus less effectively. They are not merely a byproduct of increased substantive agreement  (which in fact does not generally increase). Our results both refine and support the idea that deliberation, by increasing proximity to single-peakedness, provides an escape from the problem of majority cycling.\
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