[EM] new book about voting methods

[RLSuter at aol.com]

James,

This looks like a valuable book. Unfortunately, at a list price of
$115, not many people are going to be willing to buy it. In
fact, I'm sure that the main reason for the high price is that the
book is expected to be sold almost entirely to libraries and to
academics whose perks include money for buying books.
That's a shame because a lower price paperback version
might sell quite a few copies if it were marketed well.

I noticed that you are mentioned in the index. Could you tell
us what the mention is in reference to?

Also, I would appreciate it if you would summarize briefly
how the author defines consensus and what he has to say
about it. I ask because this word is defined in a number of
different and sometimes very conflicting ways.

Thanks for letting us know about this book.

-Ralph

In a message dated 12/4/06 3:34:18 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
election-methods-request at electorama.com writes:

<< Dear election methods fans,
 
    Nicolaus Tideman has recently written an academic book about voting
 methods, which is entitled "Collective Decisions and Voting". I think that
 it's a great book, but I don't think that it's going to be marketed in any
 serious way, so its success will depend largely on people who already care
 about the subject matter. Hence this post.
    This book covers a lot of the material that is discussed on this list; in
 my opinion it does so to a much greater extent than any previously
 published book. (Compare, for example, with Dennis Mueller's enormous
 public choice bible, which recognizes the Condorcet criterion, but seems
 unaware of the possibility of actual Condorcet-efficient voting systems.)
 The book includes analysis of the several voting methods, including (but
 not limited to) the beatpath/Schulze method, approval voting, the
 alternative vote/IRV, ranked pairs (of course, because Tideman first
 proposed it), range voting, Borda, Kemeny, Dodgson, Nanson, Bucklin,
 Black, minimax, cardinal pairwise, block voting, cumulative voting, party
 list PR, plus an in-depth discussion of different forms of STV. 
    There is an in-depth chapter on Condorcet cycles, a chapter on the Arrow
 theorem that you are likely to find surprising, a chapter on the
 Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem, and a chapter on evaluative criteria (e.g.
 majority, mutual majority, Smith, Schwartz, monotonicity, independence of
 clones, etc.) 
    There are also topics less native to this list, such as Edward Clarke's
 "demand-revealing process" and other mechanisms that seek to measure
 intensity of voter preferences, plus a philosophical framework that
 locates voting within the context of collective decisions in general. 
    I believe that the book will become available in late December. It is
 admittedly rather expensive, but I'm told that a discount will be
 available for online orders from the publisher.
 
 Here is the book's page on the publisher's web site: (the publisher is
 Ashgate)
 http://tinyurl.com/shvwc
 Here is the book's page on amazon:
 http://tinyurl.com/y3cuhp
 I also have a flyer for the book. I'll temporarily put this on my web site
 at:
 http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/x/cdvflyer.pdf
 
 my best,
 James Green-Armytage >>