Related papers: A Mathematical Model for Optimal Decisions in a Re…
We analyse optimal voting weights in two-tier voting systems. In our model, the overall population (or union) is split in groups (or member states) of different sizes. The individuals comprising the overall population constitute the first…
In linear models of consensus dynamics, the state of the various agents converges to a value which is a convex combination of the agents' initial states. We call it democratic if in the large scale limit (number of agents going to infinity)…
Humans have come to rely on machines for reducing excessive information to manageable representations. But this reliance can be abused -- strategic machines might craft representations that manipulate their users. How can a user make good…
Democracy often fails to meet its ideals, and these failures may be made worse by electoral institutions. Unwanted outcomes include polarized institutions, unresponsive representatives, and the ability of a faction of voters to gain power…
This paper studies how the organization of production shapes democratic accountability. I propose a model in which learning economies make specialization productively efficient: most workers perform one-domain tasks, while a small set of…
Liquid democracy is a decision-making paradigm in which each agent can either vote directly for some alternative or (transitively) delegate its vote to another agent. To mitigate the issue of delegation cycles or the concentration of power,…
Democracy is not a single mechanism. It is a space of possible configurations -- a spectrum stretching from pure direct participation to full delegation of authority. The systems we live under today occupy a narrow band of that spectrum,…
In this paper we extend the principle of proportional representation to rankings. We consider the setting where alternatives need to be ranked based on approval preferences. In this setting, proportional representation requires that…
We propose a simple model to explore an educational phenomenon where the correct answer emerges from group discussion. We construct our model based on several plausible assumptions: (i) We tend to follow peers' opinions. However, if a…
Decades of research suggest that information exchange in groups and organizations can reliably improve judgment accuracy in tasks such as financial forecasting, market research, and medical decision-making. However, we show that improving…
Recent breakthroughs in generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) unravel new capabilities for AI personal assistants to overcome cognitive bandwidth limitations of humans, providing decision support or even…
Teaching requires distilling a rich category distribution into a small set of informative exemplars. Although prior work shows that humans consider both representativeness and diversity when teaching, the computational principles underlying…
In most contemporary approaches to decision making, a decision problem is described by a sets of states and set of outcomes, and a rich set of acts, which are functions from states to outcomes over which the decision maker (DM) has…
We present an alternative voting system that aims at bridging the gap between proportional representative systems and majoritarian, single winner election systems. The system lets people vote for multiple parties, but then assigns each…
Peer reviews, evaluations, and selections are a fundamental aspect of modern science. Funding bodies the world over employ experts to review and select the best proposals from those submitted for funding. The problem of peer selection,…
We study proportional representation in the temporal voting model, where collective decisions are made repeatedly over time over a fixed horizon. Prior work has extensively investigated how proportional representation axioms from…
A voting center is in charge of collecting and aggregating voter preferences. In an iterative process, the center sends comparison queries to voters, requesting them to submit their preference between two items. Voters might discuss the…
The legitimacy of bottom-up democratic processes for the distribution of public funds by policy-makers is challenging and complex. Participatory budgeting is such a process, where voting outcomes may not always be fair or inclusive.…
Are there voting methods which (i) give everyone, including minorities, an equal share of effective power even if voters act strategically, (ii) promote consensus rather than polarization and inequality, and (iii) do not favour the status…
Democratic governments comprise a subset of a population whose goal is to produce coherent decisions, solving societal challenges while respecting the will of the people. New governance frameworks represent this as a social network rather…