What is the Ostrogorski paradox in simple terms?

If you vote on each issue separately, Party A's position wins every time, but if people vote by party, Party B can still come out on top.

It shows that not every promise of a winning party actually has majority support, and that majority outcomes can depend on how issues are bundled together.

Ostrogorski Paradox

🏛️ Politics & Public Administration By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated October 27, 2026

The Ostrogorski paradox is the phenomenon in which, when voters choose among party platforms that bundle positions on several issues, a party whose positions are backed by the majority on every single issue still loses the election. Douglas Rae and Hans Daudt formalized it mathematically in 1976, building on a problem raised in 1902 by the Russian-born political scientist Moisei Ostrogorski in his critique of party politics. It is a social choice paradox showing that majority outcomes can depend on how judgments are bundled.

Contents

1. The structure of the paradox
2. Conditions and theoretical place
3. The discursive dilemma and multiple elections
4. FAQ
5. References

The structure of the paradox

Take three issues, say the economy, foreign policy and welfare, two parties X and Y, and voters split into five groups. Three groups each agree with Y on two of the three issues and with X on only one, but the issue they side with X on differs from group to group. The other two groups back X on every issue. If each voter supports the party they agree with on more issues, Y wins with three groups' votes. Yet counting issue by issue, X's position has a majority on every issue. Ostrogorski (1902) criticized parties for selling heterogeneous issues as a single package and distorting the real will of the majority, and proposed temporary single-issue coalitions as an alternative. Rae and Daudt (1976) formalized this as a peculiarity of compound majority decision.

Conditions and theoretical place

Bezembinder and Van Acker (1985) analyzed how the paradox relates to nontransitive choice, that is, Condorcet cycles. Deb and Kelsey (1987) gave necessary and sufficient conditions for the paradox as the number of parties and issues grows, and Kelly (1989) stated its structure more concisely. Laffond and Lainé (2006) showed that the paradox can be avoided when preferences have a particular structure. Like Arrow's impossibility theorem, the paradox belongs to a central theme of social choice theory: aggregating rational individual judgments by majority rule can yield collective outcomes that are inconsistent or counterintuitive. Nurmi (1999) placed it within a systematic classification of voting paradoxes. It also casts doubt on the practice in representative democracy of reading an election victory as a mandate on each issue.

The discursive dilemma and multiple elections

Kornhauser and Sager (1986) presented the doctrinal paradox, in which a panel of judges can reach different verdicts depending on whether they vote premise by premise or on the conclusion, and List and Pettit (2002) generalized it into an impossibility theorem for judgment aggregation. It belongs to the same family as the Ostrogorski paradox, since issue-by-issue aggregation clashes with bundled aggregation. Brams, Kilgour and Zwicker (1998) showed the paradox of multiple elections: when several referendums are held at once, the combination of majority outcomes may be one that no voter actually supported. Daudt and Rae (1978) linked the paradox to the limits of majority rule's legitimacy. Because the party competition models of public choice theory and the median voter theorem (Downs, 1957) assume a single issue dimension, the paradox exposes the complexity of multidimensional politics.

FAQ

What is the Ostrogorski paradox in simple terms?: If you vote on each issue separately, Party A's position wins every time, but if people vote by party, Party B can still come out on top.
Why does it matter?: It shows that not every promise of a winning party actually has majority support, and that majority outcomes can depend on how issues are bundled together.

Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26

References

Ostrogorski, M. (1902). Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (F. Clarke, Trans.). London: Macmillan.
Rae, D. W., & Daudt, H. (1976). The Ostrogorski paradox: A peculiarity of compound majority decision. European Journal of Political Research, 4(4), 391–398.
Bezembinder, T., & Van Acker, P. (1985). The Ostrogorski paradox and its relation to nontransitive choice. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 11(2), 131–158.
Deb, R., & Kelsey, D. (1987). On constructing a generalized Ostrogorski paradox: Necessary and sufficient conditions. Mathematical Social Sciences, 14(2), 161–174.
Kelly, J. S. (1989). The Ostrogorski paradox. Social Choice and Welfare, 6(1), 71–76.
Laffond, G., & Lainé, J. (2006). Single-switch preferences and the Ostrogorski paradox. Mathematical Social Sciences, 52(1), 49–66.
Kornhauser, L. A., & Sager, L. G. (1986). Unpacking the court. Yale Law Journal, 96(1), 82–117.
List, C., & Pettit, P. (2002). Aggregating sets of judgments: An impossibility result. Economics and Philosophy, 18(1), 89–110.
Nurmi, H. (1999). Voting Paradoxes and How to Deal with Them. Berlin: Springer.
Brams, S. J., Kilgour, D. M., & Zwicker, W. S. (1998). The paradox of multiple elections. Social Choice and Welfare, 15(2), 211–236.
Daudt, H., & Rae, D. W. (1978). Social contract and the limits of majority rule. In P. Birnbaum, J. Lively & G. Parry (Eds.), Democracy, Consensus and Social Contract (pp. 335–357). London: Sage.
Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.

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This article was last updated on October 27, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.