It took me 2 hours to travel from 71 to South park Meadows . 2 HOURS ! <| sep |> Time Enough for Love . To Sail Beyond the Sunset , oh yeah . Glory Road . <| sep |> Intro Social choice theory is the study of collective decision processes and procedures . It is not a single theory , but a cluster of models and results concerning the aggregation of individual inputs e . g . , votes , preferences , judgments , welfare into collective outputs e . g . , collective decisions , preferences , judgments , welfare . Central questions are How can a group of individuals choose a winning outcome e . g . , policy , electoral candidate from a given set of options ? What are the properties of different voting systems ? When is a voting system democratic ? How can a collective e . g . , electorate , legislature , collegial court , expert panel , or committee arrive at coherent collective preferences or judgments on some issues , on the basis of its members ' individual preferences or judgments ? How can we rank different social alternatives in an order of social welfare ? Social choice theorists study these questions not just by looking at examples , but by developing general models and proving theorems . Pioneered in the 18 th century by Nicolas de Condorcet and JeanCharles de Borda and in the 19 th century by Charles Dodgson also known as Lewis Carroll , social choice theory took off in the 20 th century with the works of Kenneth Arrow , Amartya Sen , and Duncan Black . Its influence extends across economics , political science , philosophy , mathematics , and recently computer science and biology . Apart from contributing to our understanding of collective decision procedures , social choice theory has applications in the areas of institutional design , welfare economics , and social epistemology . And here ' s Wikipedia .