Committee decision making is examined in this study focusing on the role assigned to the committee members. In particular, we are concerned about the comparison between committee performance under specialization and non-specialization of the decision makers.

Many voting rules and, in particular, the plurality rule and Condorcet-consistent voting rules satisfy the simple-majority decisiveness property. The problem implied by such decisiveness, namely, the universal disregard of the preferences of the minority, can be ameliorated by applying unbiased...