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The Ostrogorski Paradox: A Peculiarity of Compound Majority Decision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Douglas W. Rae  and
Hans Daudt
Douglas W. Rae
Affiliation:
Yale University
Hans Daudt
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
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Abstract

In the article it is shown that if during an election each voter picks the party with which he agrees on a majority of issues, it is nevertheless possible that a majority of voters disagrees with the winning majority party on every issue. This ‘inverted majority decision’, here called the Ostrogorski-paradox, resembles the structure underlying the Condorcet paradox and Simpson's paradox. Each concerns a relation of pairwise decision or observation functioning in an n-wise world.

Our object here is to point out a possible paradox of parliamentary democracy, and to sketch some of its relationships to other paradoxes.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Political Research , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , December 1976 , pp. 391 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam

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Footnotes

*

We wish to thank Cris Achen, Gerald Kramer, Arendt Lijphart, Nelson Polsby, Martin von Nierop, Eduard Hondius, and Peter Bernholz for their criticisms of this note. We also thank the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study at Wassenaar for its hospitality and for introducing us to one another.

References

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Ostrogorski, M. (1902). Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, 2 Vols., Paris . Google Scholar