Social choice theory
Relationship to public choice theory

Despite the similar names, "public choice" and "social choice" are two distinct fields that are only weakly related. Public choice deals with the modeling of political systems as they actually exist in the real world, and is primarily limited to positive economics (predicting how politicians and other stakeholders will act). It is therefore often thought of as the application of microeconomic models to political science, in order to predict the behavior of political actors. By contrast, social choice has a much more normative bent, and deals with the abstract study of decision procedures and their properties.

The Journal of Economic Literature classification codes place Social Choice under Microeconomics at JEL D71 (with Clubs, Committees, and Associations) whereas Public Choice falls under JEL D72 (Economic Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior).
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