A mechanism or social choice function is strategyproof if truthful reporting is a weakly dominant strategy: for every true type and every collection of other reports, no misreport yields strictly higher utility or a strictly preferred outcome. This is stronger than merely requiring truthful reports to form a Nash equilibrium.
If a strategyproof social choice function selects , raising in one agent's order without moving any formerly lower alternative above it preserves the outcome. A different outcome would make one of the changes between the old and new reports a profitable deviation. Arbitrary changes among alternatives wholly above or wholly below are allowed.
With a finite set of at least three alternatives and unrestricted strict preference orders, every onto deterministic strategyproof social choice function is a dictatorship in social choice. Restricting to two alternatives or to a restricted preference domain removes essential hypotheses.
For two agents and a strategyproof social choice function, if an alternative is selected when one agent ranks it first and the other ranks it last, it is selected whenever the first agent ranks it first, whatever the other agent reports. Changing the first agent's order preserves its attainable top choice; changing the second agent's order cannot offer it an improvement over a selected bottom alternative.
