1800-luvun suomalaista äänestysteoriaa : Lorenz Lindelöf ja J. W. Snellman

Kirjoittajat

• Eerik Lagerspetz

Abstrakti

According to the story told in text-books, the theory of social choice was invented by three eight­eenth-century French mathematicians: Borda, Condorcet, and Laplace. After their contributions, the subject is said to have fallen into oblivion. The aim of this article is to challenge this narrative by reviewing a nineteenth century Finnish discussion on the merits of different voting rules. The participants of the heated dispute were both professors at the University of Helsinki: Lorenz Lin­delöf (1827–1908) was the Professor of Mathematics, a noted mathematician and statistician, while Johan Wilhelm Snellman (1806–1881) was the Professor of Philosophy and the un-official intel­lectual leader of the Finnish national movement. Many of the arguments used by them also appear in modern treatments of the social choice theory. Such basic anomalies of social choice as the Borda paradox, the Condorcet paradox, path-dependence, and strategic voting figured in the discussion. The son of the mathematician, Ernst Lindelöf, was also a Professor of Mathematics. In 1906, he became a member of the subcommittee which designed the new electoral system for Finland. The resulting system tried to combine the proportionality principle with a Borda-like pref­erential element.