Alistair McMillan

The department of economic affairs

This witness seminar on the history of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) was held at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, on 5 June 1996. The participants were Sir Alec Cairncross (Head of the Government Economic Service), Lord Callaghan of Cardiff (Chancellor of the Exchequer October 1964 to November 1967, Home Secretary November 1967 to June 1970), Fred Catherwood (Chief Industrial Adviser, DEA), Tom Caulcott (Private Secretary to George Brown), Lord Croham (formerly Douglas Allen, Deputy Under Secretary of State, DEA 1964–66, Permanent Secretary of State, DEA 1966–68), Edmund Dell (Undersecretary of State, DEA August 1967 to April 1968), Sir Ronald McIntosh (Assistant Under Secretary of State, DEA), Dame Anne Mueller (Principal, DEA), Lord Roll (formerly Eric Roll, Permanent Under Secretary of State, DEA 1964–66). It was chaired by Peter Jay. Christopher Clifford, Nuffield College, Oxford, prepared a background paper.

Arrow’s Work and the Normative Theory of Committees

This essay will consider the relation between the theory of committees put forward by Professor Kenneth J Arrow in his Social Choice and Individual Values (1951, 1963) and other writings, and ‘the preceding theory’, as we will call it, of the present writer. My own theory had been set out, when a book on the subject failed to gain publication, in some seven articles1 in the journals of 1948 and 1949, and again in the booklet written in collaboration with Dr R. A. Newing, Committee Decisions with Complementary Valuation (1951), whose MS, towards the end of 1949, had been submitted for publication as an article in a journal.

Ulster Unionism since 1921

This chapter examines the evolution of unionism in Northern Ireland since it unexpectedly and paradoxically found itself under Home Rule, which its leading politicians had raised a private army to prevent. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK in which primordial Unionism, that is, the belief that the Union is good in and for itself, survives. But even so, primordialism runs in different streams — military, religious, intellectual — whose waters scarcely mix.

Which is the Most Suitable Method of Election

Which candidate ought to be elected in a single-member constituency if all that we take into account is the order in which each of the electors ranks the various candidates? The most reasonable answer, I think, is that that candidate ought to be elected who, on the whole or on the average, stands highest on the electors’ schedules of preferences.

A Committee Using a Simple Majority: Other Shapes of Preference Curves

We pointed out in chapter 2 that a curve likely to occur in practice was the single-peaked curve with a plateau on top, and we now consider this case.

The Converse Problem: The Group of Schedules to Correspond to a Given Voting Matrix

We have seen that given any set of preference schedules it is possible to obtain the corresponding matrix. The converse problem is: Given any matrix is it possible to find a corresponding set of schedules?

Examination of Some Methods of Election in Single-Member Constituencies

We explained in the last chapter that our view is that in a single-member constituency the best candidate to elect is that candidate, if any, who in a direct vote against each of the others would be able to get at least a simple majority over them; and that if no majority candidate exists, the best to elect is that candidate who stands highest on the average on the schedules of the electors, as judged by the Borda count.

The Elasticity of Committee Decisions with Alterations in the Members’ Preference Schedules

To illustrate the type of problem that we wish to consider, we may take the example of a cartel in which price-fixing is done once a year by a committee which uses a simple majority. Let us suppose that at a meeting of this committee, the basic phenomena (the demand for its product and its cost position) leave the position of each firm identical with what it had been at the last annual meeting. The preference schedule of each firm in regard to price will be identical with its preference schedule of the previous year. Unless some new source of change is introduced, the same price as before will be selected. One or more of the firms, we may suppose, are pondering the chance of being able to influence the decision of the cartel by inducing others, through enticement or threat, to alter their voting behaviour at the next meeting of the committee. The enticement may be the offer of some trading or business advantage, or the threat may be to leave the cartel and enter into competition with the remaining members. We wish to examine and, if possible, to measure the effect on the committee’s decision when some of the members alter their voting.

Appendix: Text of Dodgson’s Three Pamphlets and of ‘the Cyclostyled Sheet’

This reprint of A Discussion … is made by courtesy of the Princeton University Library in which is the only known copy. It had been Dodgson’s own copy and the small emendations which he jotted on the text have been incorporated in the present version.

A Committee and Motions

The present book will present the logic of committee decisions and of elections, for an election is a species of committee.