It is standard wisdom in politics that if you control the agenda, it doesn’t matter how people vote.
I think I understand the confusion. When I say “vote”, I am not necessarily talking about electorates or plebiscites. In fact, Pettit’s paper is remarkable precisely for also considering situations that have nothing to do with politics or government.
Consider the case of a trust fund that must make decisions for the trust based on how the original creator specified it. For example, they may be charged to make investment decisions that best support a specific community or need. The executors of this trust try their hardest to meet the spirit as well as the letter of these instructions, so they end up adopting rules that require members to vote separately on whether a proposed action meets the spirit of the instructions and whether it meets the letter of the instructions. The rationale is that this ensures the executors as a whole have done their homework and cannot be held liable for missing one or the other requirement through a single vote.
The doctrinal paradox in this case demonstrates you can get different outcomes if you had them vote directly on whether it met spirit and letter, or had them vote separately on the components of the question.
I hope that this explains what I mean by “required to do it” by providing an incentive that has nothing to do with politics. I hope it also encourages a shift towards thinking in terms of systems and their consistency criterions.
I won’t respond to the rest of the comment because discourse about political agenda is not relevant to this discussion.
I think I understand the confusion. When I say “vote”, I am not necessarily talking about electorates or plebiscites.
Neither am I. The “standard wisdom” I quoted applies to the very broadest understanding of “politics”: the theory of collective decision-making.
they end up adopting rules that require members to vote separately on
They didn’t “end up” adopting those rules, they chose those rules. Which are clearly the wrong rules.
In all this I’m also not seeing a place for the people participating in these joint decisions to discuss matters. Having each “voter” (see above) make their decision in isolation, on an agenda set by someone else, who will then combine the votes into a joint decision on questions never put, is a prima facie absurd way to do business, except for the one setting those rules and choosing the questions.
I think I understand the confusion. When I say “vote”, I am not necessarily talking about electorates or plebiscites. In fact, Pettit’s paper is remarkable precisely for also considering situations that have nothing to do with politics or government.
Consider the case of a trust fund that must make decisions for the trust based on how the original creator specified it. For example, they may be charged to make investment decisions that best support a specific community or need. The executors of this trust try their hardest to meet the spirit as well as the letter of these instructions, so they end up adopting rules that require members to vote separately on whether a proposed action meets the spirit of the instructions and whether it meets the letter of the instructions. The rationale is that this ensures the executors as a whole have done their homework and cannot be held liable for missing one or the other requirement through a single vote.
The doctrinal paradox in this case demonstrates you can get different outcomes if you had them vote directly on whether it met spirit and letter, or had them vote separately on the components of the question.
I hope that this explains what I mean by “required to do it” by providing an incentive that has nothing to do with politics. I hope it also encourages a shift towards thinking in terms of systems and their consistency criterions.
I won’t respond to the rest of the comment because discourse about political agenda is not relevant to this discussion.
Neither am I. The “standard wisdom” I quoted applies to the very broadest understanding of “politics”: the theory of collective decision-making.
They didn’t “end up” adopting those rules, they chose those rules. Which are clearly the wrong rules.
In all this I’m also not seeing a place for the people participating in these joint decisions to discuss matters. Having each “voter” (see above) make their decision in isolation, on an agenda set by someone else, who will then combine the votes into a joint decision on questions never put, is a prima facie absurd way to do business, except for the one setting those rules and choosing the questions.