Edward Elgar Publishing SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY (The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics series)

This major reference collection presents in three volumes the key articles and papers on social choice theory. Volume One centres attention on key aspects of the debate on Arrow's impossibility theorem, carefully counter-poising differing viewpoints and embracing competing methodologies. In a field prone to the excessive use of mathematics and of arcane high theory, Charles Rowley skilfully presents a literature which is accessible to non-mathematicians and yet which offers full coverage of all the major debates. Volumes two and three extend the coverage of social choice theory to review the attempts of leading scholars to resolve the ageless problems of determining social goals and reconciling apparent inconsistencies among such goals. Professor Rowley carefully guides the reader through a litany of approaches, both methodological individualist and social engineering, ends-related and process-related in nature. Volume two reprints leading contributions to the utilitarian and contractarian ethics while volume three completes this exercise with material on the social justice and contractarian ethics. Professor Rowley's own introductory essay exposes the social choice research programme to his own Virginian critique, while integrating a large, diffuse literature into a unified whole.