In social choice and operations research, the utilitarian rule (also called the max-sum rule) is a rule saying that, among all possible alternatives, society should pick the alternative which maximizes the sum of the utilities of all individuals in society. It is a formal mathematical representation of the utilitarian philosophy, and is often justified by reference to Harsanyi's utilitarian theorem or the Von NeumannâMorgenstern theorem.
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đ Utilitarian rule in the context of Majority rule
In social choice theory, the majority rule (MR) is a social choice rule which says that, when comparing two options (such as bills or candidates), the option preferred by more than half of the voters (a majority) should win.
In political philosophy, the majority rule is one of two major competing notions of democracy. The most common alternative is given by the utilitarian rule (or other welfarist rules), which identify the spirit of liberal democracy with the equal consideration of interests. Although the two rules can disagree in theory, political philosophers beginning with James Mill have argued the two can be reconciled in practice, with majority rule being a valid approximation to the utilitarian rule whenever voters share similarly-strong preferences. This position has found strong support in many social choice models, where the socially-optimal winner and the majority-preferred winner often overlap.