Information Aggregation in Standing and Ad Hoc Committees

This resurgence of interest in Condorcet’s approach was sparked by a key observation of David Austen-Smith and Jeffrey Banks (1996) that “naive” voting is generally not a Nash equilibrium of the voting game. That is, the optimal way to vote in a multiperson committee is not usually the same as the optimal way to vote in a committee of one, an issue overlooked by Condorcet and other nongame-theoretic analyses of his model. In fact, a voter’s strategic incentives generally depend on all the variables of the model: the size of the committee, the voting rule and procedure, the information structure, preferences, and so forth. Because such a simple model offers rich insights into the strategic considerations faced by voters, the CJM has played a prominent role in enhancing our understanding of voting mechanisms.