Complexity and social decision rules

This paper attempts to show how a particular concept and measure of complexity, as derived from automata theory, can be meaningfully interpreted in a program of ´limited rationality´ regarding individual or social choices. The complexity measure appears to be a natural consequence of looking at a decision rule as a finite-state machine that computes preferences bounded by computational constraints. By factoring the social decision process into component processes it is demonstrated how searching for improvement depends on ´structural´ and ´computational´ limitations.