Optimizing Viscous Democracy
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2024
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| _version_ | 1866913346452717568 |
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| author | Armstrong, Ben Alouf-Heffetz, Shiri Talmon, Nimrod |
| author_facet | Armstrong, Ben Alouf-Heffetz, Shiri Talmon, Nimrod |
| contents | Viscous democracy is a generalization of liquid democracy, a social choice framework in which voters may transitively delegate their votes. In viscous democracy, a "viscosity" factor decreases the weight of a delegation the further it travels, reducing the chance of excessive weight flowing between ideologically misaligned voters. We demonstrate that viscous democracy often significantly improves the quality of group decision-making over liquid democracy. We first show that finding optimal delegations within a viscous setting is NP-hard. However, simulations allow us to explore the practical effects of viscosity. Across social network structures, competence distributions, and delegation mechanisms we find high viscosity reduces the chance of "super-voters" attaining large amounts of weight and increases the number of voters that are able to affect the outcome of elections. This, in turn, improves group accuracy as a whole. As a result, we argue that viscosity should be considered a core component of liquid democracy. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_06698 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Optimizing Viscous Democracy Armstrong, Ben Alouf-Heffetz, Shiri Talmon, Nimrod Physics and Society Viscous democracy is a generalization of liquid democracy, a social choice framework in which voters may transitively delegate their votes. In viscous democracy, a "viscosity" factor decreases the weight of a delegation the further it travels, reducing the chance of excessive weight flowing between ideologically misaligned voters. We demonstrate that viscous democracy often significantly improves the quality of group decision-making over liquid democracy. We first show that finding optimal delegations within a viscous setting is NP-hard. However, simulations allow us to explore the practical effects of viscosity. Across social network structures, competence distributions, and delegation mechanisms we find high viscosity reduces the chance of "super-voters" attaining large amounts of weight and increases the number of voters that are able to affect the outcome of elections. This, in turn, improves group accuracy as a whole. As a result, we argue that viscosity should be considered a core component of liquid democracy. |
| title | Optimizing Viscous Democracy |
| topic | Physics and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.06698 |