Recovering non-monotonicity problems of voting rules

Abstract

A social choice rule (SCR) is monotonic if raising a single alternative in voters' preferences while leaving the rankings otherwise unchanged is never detrimental to the prospects for winning of the raised alternative. Monotonicity is rather weak but well-known to discriminate against scoring elimination rules, such as plurality with a run off and single transferable vote. We define the minimal monotonic extension of an SCR as its unique monotonic supercorrespondence that is minimal with respect to set inclusion. After showing the existence of the concept, we characterize, for every non-monotonic SCR, the alternatives that its minimal monotonic extension must contain. As minimal monotonic extensions can entail coarse SCRs, we address the possibility of refining them without violating monotonicity provided that this refinement does not diverge from the original SCR more than the divergence prescribed by the minimal monotonic extension itself. We call these refinements monotonic adjustments and identify conditions over SCRs that ensure unique monotonic adjustments that are minimal with respect to set inclusion. As an application of our general findings, we consider plurality with a runoff, characterize its minimal monotonic extension as well as its (unique) minimal monotonic adjustment. Interestingly, this adjustment is not coarser than plurality with a runoff itself, hence we suggest it as a monotonic substitute to plurality with a runoff.