Description:
The purpose of this article is to introduce a Cartesian product structure
into the social choice theoretical framework and to examine if
new possibility results to Gibbard’s and Sen’s paradoxes can be developed
thanks to it. We believe that a Cartesian product structure
is a pertinent way to describe individual rights in the social choice
theory since it discriminates the personal features comprised in each
social state. First we define some conceptual and formal tools related
to the Cartesian product structure. We then apply these notions to
Gibbard’s paradox and to Sen’s impossibility of a Paretian liberal. Finally
we compare the advantages of our approach to other solutions
proposed in the literature for both impossibility theorems.