Social choice without the Pareto principle under weak independence

Abstract

We show that the class of social welfare functions that satisfy a weak independence condition identified by Campbell (J Econ 12:259-272, 1976) and Baigent (J Econ 47(4):407-411, 1987) is fairly rich and freed of a power concentration on a single individual. This positive result prevails when a weak Pareto condition is imposed. Moreover, under weak independence, an impossibility of the Wilson (J Econ 5:478-486, 1972) type vanishes.