[EM] new book about voting methods

[James Green-Armytage]

RLSuter at aol.com writes:
>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.

	Yes. As I understand it, Nic was hoping for a broader publication, but he
considered the offer from this publisher to be better than not having the
book published at all.
>
>I noticed that you are mentioned in the index. Could you tell
>us what the mention is in reference to?

	Cardinal pairwise.
http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/cwp13.htm
>
>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.

	I don't know if I can do justice to his discussion of consensus with a
summary, but I can at least give you his definition:

"A collective decision is made by the mode of consensus if and only if all
members of the collectivity agree that the chosen pattern of coordinated
actions represents what the collectivity ought to do or what they want the
collectivity to do." 

	A distinction is made between consensus and pseudo-consensus, where
pseudo-consensus is defined as follows:

"A collective decision is made by the mode of pseudo-consensus if and only
if one or more of the members of the collectivity regard the chosen
pattern of coordinated future actions as not what the collectivity ought
to do and not what they desire, but all agree to coordinate their actions
nevertheless, without any compensation for their agreement."

	For both consensus and pseudo-consensus, a further distinction is made
based on whether the consensus is revealed or discovered.
	Consensus, pseudo-consensus, trade, and extortion belong to a family of
collective decision procedures which Tideman refers to as the
"agreement-on-outcome" family, whereas authority, random process, voting,
and contest belong to a family that he calls "agreement-on-procedure".

my best,
James