The Structure of Heresthetical Power

This paper considers manipulation of collective choice – in such environments, a potential alternative is powerful only to the degree that its introduction can affect the collective decision. Using the Banks set (Banks [1985]), we present and characterize alternatives that can, and those that can not, affect sophisticated collective decision making. Along with offering two substantive findings about political manipulation and a link between our results and Riker’s concept of heresthetic, we define a new tournament solution concept that refines the Banks set, which we refer to as the heresthetically stable set. ∗Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Email: [email protected]. †Assistant Professor, Department of Government & Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Email: [email protected]. ‡Assistant Professor, Department of Government & Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Email: [email protected].