[Séminaire Caen] Gordon Tullock’s cruisade against Arrow’s ‘phantom’. The different paths of Public Choice and Social Choice.

Abstract:
These two fields of thought—Public Choice and Social Choice—are traditionally understood as examining group decision-making from rather different perspectives: one positive, the other normative (Boettke and Marciano, 2015; Mueller, 2015). Institutionally, they are anchored in two distinct scientific communities, two scholarly societies (Public Choice vs. Social Choice and Welfare), two flagship journals bearing the same names, and two emblematic founding figures (among others): Gordon Tullock (1922–2014) and Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017). Yet despite his central role in shaping the Public Choice community, Tullock spent much of his life systematically criticising Arrow’s theorem—in roughly twenty articles (published and unpublished) and in several books—from 1959 until his death. For instance, in a 1967 Quarterly Journal of Economics article, he remarked that “a phantom has stalked the classrooms and seminars of economics and political science for nearly fifteen years.” Tullock’s determination to downplay the importance of the Arrow Theorem is also evident in his correspondence: “I would be delighted to write a joint paper with you on the frequency of the paradox and on what it means, but I am not ready to go as far as you in asserting that Arrow’s theorem is unimportant” (Tullock papers, Riker to Tullock, 10 July 1964). Drawing on published materials and on Arrow’s and Tullock’s archival papers (held respectively at Duke and Stanford), this article seeks to: (1) understand why Tullock developed such sustained criticism of Arrow; (2) reconstruct the historical exchanges between Arrow and Tullock concerning the significance and interpretation of the “Arrow Theorem”; and (3) shed light on some of the reasons why Public Choice and Social Choice evolved independently despite their initial conceptual affinities.