Borda rule and arrow's independence condition in finite societies

Abstract

In his refined characterization of the Borda rule, Maskin (2025; forthcoming in the Journal of Political Economy) significantly employs the assumption of a continuum of voters. He concludes by posing an important open question about the possible extension of the characterization result to the case of finitely many voters. This note provides a positive response to this question, based on a novel axiom that conveys the normative appeal of continuity when applied to a discrete setting, namely, that the social rule is not overly sensitive to a small change in voters' preferences.