Agenda Setting
Imagine that you are one of three judges for a singing competition. You need to decide which of three finalists should win. You have no qualifications to evaluate actual singing ability, so you plan to make your choice based entirely on your preferences for the style of music that each performer chose: a sappy ballad, a traditional Irish folk song, and a heavy metal song. Luckily for you, you happened to see the notes written by the other judges, and so you know how your fellow judges ranked the finalists. One judge had the following preference ordering: ballad > Irish folk song > heavy metal. The other judge had the following preference ordering: heavy metal > ballad > Irish folk song. Your preference ordering, however, is the following: Irish folk song > heavy metal > ballad. The rules of the competition do not specify how the judges are to reach their decision.
- 1) Let’s suppose that you suggest a round-robin tournament in which everyone votes on the finalists in a series of pair-wise contests. How many pair-wise contests does each of the finalists win? Is there a Condorcet winner? Explain. Does this decision-making process identify a clear winner? Explain.
- 2) Now let’s suppose that you propose a decision-making procedure by which all of the judges begin by considering only a subset of the available pair-wise contests. The specific decision-making procedure that you propose is that two finalists should compete in a pair-wise contest with the winner competing in a second and final round against the remaining finalist. Given your preference ordering, which finalist do you want to win? If you were in charge of setting the voting agenda and could determine the order in which the pair-wise contests took place, what order would you pick and why?
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