Without the tools of ethics and philosophy, strategists may go about their strategizing in an ad hoc manner characterized by frequent vague appeals to a crudely defined notion of political realism and a myopic conception of instrumental expediency. But ethics also must survive the formidable challenge of providing knowledge about and guidance for strategic choices. To paraphrase Dennett, ethics can make strategy rigorous, but strategy also makes ethics honest.Without the tools of ethics and philosophy, strategists may go about their strategizing in an ad hoc manner characterized by frequent vague appeals to a crudely defined notion of political realism and a myopic conception of instrumental expediency. But ethics also must survive the formidable challenge of providing knowledge about and guidance for strategic choices.
#Monday Musings: Adam Elkus
Social Choice: A Personal Theory of Power in Preferences, Choices, and Strategy
There are many sources of power, but this essay focuses on choice-theoretic research and social choice in particular. Social choice concerns the process by which individual preferences are aggregated into collective choices through group decision processes such as voting. I hope to convince the reader that strategists ought to be thinking about social choice and its implications for the complexity of attaining stable agreement. It is by pondering the nature of social choice that we truly understand why the strategist is a “hero.”