Condorcet Dynamics

The Condorcet Jury Theorem has classically presumed a static context: the decision making group faces a fixed set of alternatives, compares the options in a pairwise fashion, and the process ends when the group makes a final choice. This is a reasonable representation of what juries do. But it is an inappropriate model for political institutions, such as agencies and legislatures, that make the remake policy over time. In these settings, alternatives are not fixed exogenously; they often are modifications of the status quo policy. In order to represent this type of process, this paper constructs models of Condorcet dynamics. These models yield results demonstrating that Condorcet structures have normatively powerful effects in a dynamical setting.