Choosing How to Choose: Self-Stable Majority Rules and Constitutions
研究宪法如何影响社会决策，并定义“自我稳定”的宪法概念，即社会不会投票改变其规则。证明自我稳定宪法总是存在，但多数宪法可能不稳定，尤其当修宪规则与日常规则相同时。
Constitutional arrangements affect the decisions made by a society. We study \nhow this effect leads to preferences of citizens over constitutions; and ultimately \nhow this has a feedback that determines which constitutions can survive in a \ngiven society. Constitutions are stylized here, to consist of a voting rule for \nordinary business and possibly a different voting rule for making changes to the \nconstitution. We define an equilibrium notion for constitutions, called self-stability, \nwhereby under the rules of a self-stable constitution, the society would not \nvote to change the constitution. We argue that only self-stable constitutions will \nendure. We prove that self-stable constitutions always exist, but that most constitutions \n(even very prominent ones) may not be self-stable for some societies. We \nshow that constitutions where the voting rule used to amend the constitution is \nthe same as the voting rule used for ordinary business are dangerously simplistic, \nand there are (many) societies for which no such constitution is self-stable. We \nconclude with a characterization of the set of self-stable constitutions that use \nmajority rule for ordinary business.