Wow, it is impressive to see Arrow's theorem (and Arrow himself) actually important in an ancient a process as this one.
I'd always considered voting cycles more of a mathematical concern than a practical one. Maybe I need to suggest they implement Maximum Majority Voting…. -- Ernie P. On Feb 11, 2013, at 10:55 AM, [email protected] wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > W Post > The political science of papal elections > > Posted by Dylan Matthews on February 11, 2013 > > > Pope Benedict XVI — né Joseph Ratzinger — has announced that he will step > down at the end of this month. In doing so, he becomes the first pope to > resign in 598 years. The last resignation, in 1415, occurred when Gregory XII > stepped down to end the Western Schism in the Catholic Church, in which rival > popes and antipopes, each recognized by a different set of secular > governments in Europe, claimed sovereignty over the church. > > Which is to say that this is a pretty strange occurrence. But, as with normal > papal successions, it will prompt the vote of the College of Cardinals, a > group of up to 120 church leaders (current estimates put the number around > 118) below the age limit of 80 who convene to elect new popes. Exactly how > that process works, however, changes frequently, and indeed has changed since > the election that elevated Benedict in 2005. > > NYU political scientist Joshua Tucker and PM at Duck of Minerva have compiled > a good set of political science research into papal elections. It’s a > sensitive subject because, as GWU professors Forrest Maltzman, Melissa > Schwartzberg and the late Lee Sigelman put it in their paper on Benedict’s > election, “Officially, Ratzinger’s selection was attributed to the will of > God, a force not amenable to any empirical test that is in our power to > conduct.” > > But unofficially, Benedict was selected in accordance with the wishes of his > predecessor, John Paul II. For most of John Paul’s tenure, papal elections > were subject to a supermajority requirement, with a two-thirds majority > required to finalize a selection. As Maltzman et al show, by the middle of > 1990 John Paul had already appointed two-thirds of voting cardinals. Assuming > his appointees all agreed on a candidate, they could have outvoted any > previous appointees from 1990 until John Paul’s death in 2005 and installed a > candidate along John Paul’s preferred lines: > > > Source: Maltzman, Schwartzberg, and Sigelman. > > But as the above chart shows, a funny thing happened in 1996. John Paul II > issued Universi Dominici Gregis, a document revising the two-thirds > requirement. In filibuster parlance, he went nuclear. As the authors note, > the timing here is funny. He already had a supermajority of appointees in the > college. This seems to refute the notion that the change was intended to help > secure a future pope who would continue John Paul-like policies. > > Instead, they argue, what drove revision was a desire to prevent gridlock. > There were three likely candidates for pope in 2005 (according to these > authors; others disagree). There was Benedict (then Ratzinger), a Vatican > insider with a reputation as a doctrinaire conservative. There was Carlo > Maria Martini, a quite liberal Italian cardinal and former archbishop of > Milan who died last year and supported same-sex civil unions, a right of the > dying to refuse medical treatment and the distribution of condoms as a > “lesser evil” to AIDS transmission. And there was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the > archbishop of Buenos Aires, who earned support from cardinals in the > developing world and holds fairly mainline Catholic views. Not only did no > block have a clear majority, but a “voting paradox” was at work: > > > Source: Maltzman, Schwartzberg, and Sigelman. > > To see what’s going wrong here, suppose you’re in the Martini bloc. Getting > either the Ratzinger bloc or the Bergoglio bloc on your side would put you > over a two-thirds majority. You prefer Bergoglio to Ratzinger, so you go to > Bergoglio first. But he prefers Ratzinger to you, so he turns you down. You > could go to Ratzinger, but you really don’t want to make concessions to that > faction. And Ratzinger and Bergoglio can’t put together a two-thirds majority > between them, and even if they could, Ratzinger doesn’t like Bergoglio as > much as he likes Martini. Everything’s deadlocked. A majority election > wouldn’t eliminate the possibility of deadlock, but it would make it much > less likely. > > Maltzman et al hypothesized that even if John Paul II hadn’t noticed this > potential problem, he likely was talking to someone who had. In 1994, they > note, John Paul appointed the Pontifical Academy of Social Science, meant to > provide the church with advice from political scientists, sociologists and > economists of note. One of the original appointees was Kenneth Arrow, the > Nobel-winning economist whose most famous work concerns voting paradoxes. His > Arrow impossibility theorem proved that it is impossible to take the ranked > preferences of a group of voters and turn them into a societal ranking that > conforms with certain basic rational and fairness requirements (for example, > one requirement is that one person ranking an option higher shouldn’t hurt > its societal ranking). The relevance of that work to the Pope’s dilemma > should be clear enough. > > Regardless of whether the political scientists’ history is right and Arrow’s > views really did push the cardinal election process in this direction, their > point is important for this next papal election because Benedict has reversed > John Paul II’s repeal of the two-thirds requirement, the very repeal that > enabled Benedict to be elected in the first place. In the past, this has led > to compromise selections like, well, John Paul II, but if a voting paradox > arises, the church could be in for considerable gridlock. > > > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community > <[email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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