A note on social choice theory without the Pareto principle

This paper was originally submitted to Journal of Economic Theory and was accepted. After presenting it at the first meeting of the society for social choice and welfare in Caen, France, we were informed by Professor Bernard Monjardet that a weak version of our main result (Proposition 1) had been proved in Y. Murakami's book, Logic and Social Choice, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1968. We later voluntarily withdrew the paper from JET even though the editor was still willing to publish it on the ground that it would do the profession a service by making more people aware of a simple yet fundamental result in social choice theory. Instead we decide to submit this paper to Social Choice and Welfare, hoping that it will reach the intended readers more effectively.