The Welfare Connsequences of Strategic Voting

I never planned to study strategic voting. I just dislike not being able to …nish a project I have once started. This thesis has come about because I have thought for a long time that there is something seriously wrong with the methodology of social choice and the theory of strategic voting. In particular, I have always been puzzled by the reluctance of theorists working in these …elds to provide models in which voters’ intensities of preference have a role, even though they clearly seem to a¤ect voters’ behaviour. However, I realised early on that scholars in these …elds are used to discussing philosophical and methodological issues by way of constructing formal models. Merely pointing out that this particular behavioural assumption concerning preference intensity is unrealistic would not have been very convincing without an account of how changing it a¤ects our view of strategic voting. I therefore began this project of ’philosophy of science in practice’ about a decade ago. Despite the fact that three of the essays are written with an audience of economists in mind, I consider this work mainly a methodological one. I have studied strategic voting because I believe I have something important to say about it, and because I …nd it theoretically intriguing. These motivations, viz. theoretical curiosity and stubbornness I have inherited from my father Pekka T. Lehtinen. I believe he has had the most important in‡uence on my work, despite the fact that as a biologist he is unlikely to understand my topic very well. I thank him for having set the example for critical thinking and un‡inching search for knowledge.