Social choice in large populations with single-peaked preferences

An anonymous social choice function for a large atomless population maps cross-section distributions of preferences into outcomes. Because any one individual is too insignificant to affect these distributions, every anonymous social choice function is individually strategy- proof. However, not every anonymous social choice function is group strategy-proof. If the set of outcomes is linearly ordered and participants have single-peaked preferences, an anonymous social choice function is group strategy-proof if and only if it can be implemented by a mechanism involving binary votes between neighbouring outcomes with nondecreasing thresholds for moving higher up . Such a mechanism can be interpreted as a version of Moulin's (1980) generalized median-voter mechanism for a large population.