A note on choosing the alternative with the best median evaluation

The voting rule proposed by Basset and Persky (Public Choice 99: 299-310) picks the alternative with best median evaluation. The present note shows that this MaxMed principle is equivalent to ask the social planner to apply the MaxMin principle allowing him to discard half of the population. In one-dimensional, single-peaked domains, the paper compares this rule with majority rule and the utilitarian criterion. The MaxMed outcome is rejected by a majority of voters in favor of outcomes which are also utilitarian improvements.

A Participatory Approach to Assess the Effectiveness of Responses to Cope With Flood Risk

This work illustrates the preliminary findings of a participatory research process aimed at identifying responses for sustainable water management in a climate change perspective, in two river basins in Europe and Asia. The paper describes the methodology implemented through local workshops, aimed at eliciting and evaluating possible responses to flood risk. Participatory workshops allowed for the identification of four categories of possible responses and a set of nine evaluation criteria, three for each of the three pillars of sustainable development. The main outcome of such activities consists in the ranking of broad response categories instrumental to the objective of the Brahmatwinn research project, i.e. the identification of Integrated Water Resource Management Strategies (IWRMS) based upon the issues and preferences elicited from local experts. The mDSS tool was used to facilitate transparent and robust management of the information collected through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and communication of the outputs.Participatory Process, Climate Change, Flood Risk, Decision Support System, Multi Criteria Analysis, MCA, Eliciting Responses, Evaluating Responses, Integrated Water Resources Management, IWRM, Mulino Decision Support System, mDSS

Figure Skating and the Theory of Social Choice

The rule used by the United States Figure Skating Association and the International Skating Union, hereafter the ISU Rule, to aggregate individual rankings of the skaters by the judges into a final ranking, is an interesting example of a social welfare function. This rule is examined thoroughly in this paper from the perspective of the modern theory of social choice. The ISU Rule is based on four different criteria, the first being median ranks of the skaters. Although the median rank criterion is a majority principle, it is completely at odd with another majority principle introduced in this paper and called the Extended Condorcet Criterion. It may be translated as follows: If a competitor is ranked consistently ahead of another competitor by an absolute majority of judges, he should be ahead in the final ranking. Consistency here refers to the absence of a cycle in the majority relation involving these two skaters. There are actually many cycles in the data of four Olympic Games that were examined. The Kemeny rule may be used to break these cycles. This is not only consistent with the Extended Condorcet Criterion but the latter also proves useful in finding Kemeny orders over large sets of alternatives, by allowing decomposition of these orders. The ISU, the Kemeny, the Borda rankings and the ranking according to the raw marks are then compared on 24 olympic competitions. The four rankings disagree in many instances. Finally it is shown that the ISU Rule may be very sensitive to small errors on the part of the judges and that it does not escape the numerous theorems on manipulation. Some considerations are also offered as to whether the ISU Rule is more or less prone to manipulation than others. La règle utilisée par la United States Figure Skating Association et l'International Skating Union, ci-après la règle de l'ISU, pour agréger les classements des patineurs par chacun des juges en un classement final, est un exemple intéressant de fonction de bien-être social. Cette règle est examinée en détail dans cet article du point de vue de la théorie moderne des choix sociaux. Cette règle repose sur quatre critères, le premier étant le rang médian des patineurs. Bien que ce critère soit en fait un principe majoritaire, il va à l'encontre d'un autre principe majoritaire introduit ici et appelé le Critère de Condorcet généralisé. Il peut être traduit ainsi: Si un compétiteur est classé avant un autre de manière cohérente par une majorité de juges, il devrait l'être dans le classement final. La cohérence réfère à l'absence de cycle dans la relation majoritaire impliquant ces deux compétiteurs. De fait, plusieurs cycles ont été rencontrés dans les données de quatre Jeux olympiques qui ont été examinées. La règle de Kemeny peut être utilisée pour briser ces cycles. Non seulement cette règle est-elle cohérente avec le Critère de Condorcet généralisé mais ce dernier s'avère utile dans la recherche d'ordres de Kemeny sur un grand nombre d'alternatives, en permettant la décomposition de ces ordres. Les classements des patineurs selon les règles de l'ISU, de Kemeny, de Borda et selon les notes brutes sont ensuite comparés pour 24 compétitions olympiques. Les quatre classements sont souvent différents. Finalement, il est démontré que la règle de l'ISU peut être très sensible à de petites erreurs de la part des juges et qu'elle n'échappe pas aux nombreux théorèmes d'impossibilité sur la manipulation. Quelques remarques sont aussi offertes sur la plus ou moins grande susceptibilité de cette règle à la manipulation par rapport à d'autres règles.

Interpreting the will of the people: a positive analysis of ordinal preference aggregation

We investigate how individuals think groups should aggregate members’ ordinal preferences – that is, how they interpret “the will of the people.” In an experiment, we elicit revealed attitudes toward ordinal preference aggregation and classify subjects according to the rules they apparently deploy. Majoritarianism is rare. Instead, people employ rules that place greater weight on compromise options. The classification’s fit is excellent, and clustering analysis reveals that it does not omit important rules. We ask whether rules are stable across domains, whether people impute cardinal utility from ordinal ranks, and whether attitudes toward aggregation differ across countries with divergent traditions

Benchmarking evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithms

Choosing and tuning an optimization procedure for a given class of nonlinear optimization problems is not an easy task. One way to proceed is to consider this as a tournament, where each procedure will compete in different ‘disciplines’. Here, disciplines could either be different functions, which we want to optimize, or specific performance measures of the optimization procedure. We would then be interested in the algorithm that performs best in a majority of cases or whose average performance is maximal. We will focus on evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithms (EMOA), and will present a novel approach to the design and analysis of evolutionary multiobjective benchmark experiments based on similar work from the context of machine learning. We focus on deriving a consensus among several benchmarks over different test problems and illustrate the methodology by reanalyzing the results of the CEC 2007 EMOA competition

Design decisions: concordance of designers and effects of the Arrow’s theorem on the collective preference ranking

The problem of collective decision by design teams has received considerable attention in the scientific literature of engineering design. A much debated problem is that in which multiple designers formulate their individual preference rankings of different design alternatives and these rankings should be aggregated into a collective one. This paper focuses the attention on three basic research questions: (i) “How can the degree of concordance of designer rankings be measured?”, (ii) “For a given set of designer rankings, which aggregation model provides the most coherent solution?”, and (iii) “To what extent is the collective ranking influenced by the aggregation model in use?”. The aim of this paper is to present a novel approach that addresses the above questions in a relatively simple and agile way. A detailed description of the methodology is supported by a practical application to a real-life case study

From the Classroom to the Tip of the Spear – Designing a System to Track USMA’s Intellectual Capital

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected and unstable, the US Army’s mission becomes more complex. This reality, when coupled with a smaller force, is increasing the Army’s reliance on foreign partners and its need for non-traditional skills. Given these challenges, deployed units often offset capability gaps using “reachback,” the act of contacting external organizations for critical expertise. Based on recent support to the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, the United States Military Academy (USMA) possesses considerable reachback potential; however, to fulfill such requests, USMA must first understand its capability and capacity. With this in mind, our research shows that although USMA’s faculty is quite willing to help deployed units, no formalized process exists to catalogue and leverage its collective intellectual capital. As such, we identify the requirement for an intuitive system to fill this void, and we develop and analyze several alternative

Voting beyond vetoing:Variations in agenda-setting and balloting procedures for multi-option referendums

Referendums most commonly occur in a binary format in which citizens either accept or reject a policy proposal. In practice, many voters are unlikely to be fully satisfied with either of these two options. They may have reservations about the policy or may only be willing to accept it conditional on some amendments. A binary referendum does not allow voters to express preferences for variations on the policy proposal. This may cause voters to reject a proposal despite being in favour of new policy on the topic. Such a rejection also makes it difficult for policymakers to adequately interpret a referendum outcome. Multi-option referendums could be an effective alternative, as they offer voters a choice between three or more policy options. They result in a single winning option which details the most desired policy route. Compared to binary referendums, multi-option formats have several advantages but also face several challenges, neither of which have been structurally analysed in prior research. Through four academic articles, this thesis explores various design questions relevant to multi-option referendums. The findings contribute to our insights into the implications of design variations for the empowerment of citizens and the materialisation of clear voting outcomes. This research considers two different phases of the referendum process. First, the agenda-setting phase raises the question of who decides when a multi-option referendum is held and which topics and policy proposals are on the ballot. Secondly, the balloting phase raises questions on how votes are expressed on the different options and how they are combined into a final result. The practical manifestations of various advantages and challenges in the two phases are explored by analysing both empirical experiences and new survey data. The empirical research presents a new dataset of national-level multi-option referendums. It discusses what we can learn from how multi-option referendums have been designed and conducted in practice. It also maps different processes of agenda-setting and explores the role of citizens in this phase. The survey research structurally compares the effects of different balloting variations in two separate studies. The first study compares voting on referendum ballots using a single question or multiple questions. The second study compares voting results between a multi-option ballot and a binary ballot. The research findings imply that multi-option referendums can be an effective instrument for citizen participation when more than two policy scenarios are possible and enjoy support. They can empower citizens both as voters, being offered more choice, and as agenda-setters, enabling them to contribute to the ballot content. Variations in terms of who selects the ballot options and which methods are used to vote on the options each have their own advantages and limitations. The optimal choice may depend on the context and desirable characteristics of the referendum. One general and pressing recommendation for balloting is to use voting methods in which voters can vote for more than one proposal. With such alternative voting methods, voters can either approve of several proposals or rank them according to their relative preferences. This greatly increases the likelihood of yielding a clear majority outcome. The thesis concludes that though not all referendums may benefit from a multi-option format, the multi-option format should be seriously considered. It maintains the advantages of referendums as an accessible instrument to participate in policymaking on a concrete topic, whilst providing more choice to voters and greater clarity on preferred policy routes. The findings on the characteristics of various ballot designs, voting methods and agenda-setting models can help practitioners and academics to evaluate the relative advantages and limitations of various multi-option designs and to weigh them against the simpler but also more limitative binary referendum design

Models of Political Economy

Models of Political Economy will introduce students to the basic methodology of political economics. It covers all core theories as well as new developments including: decision theory game theory mechanism design games of asymmetric information. Hannu Nurmi's text will prove to be invaluable to all students who wish to understand this increasingly technical field

Collaborative action research for the governance of climate adaptation - foundations, conditions and pitfalls

This position paper serves as an introductory guide to designing and facilitating an action research process with stakeholders in the context of climate adaptation. Specifically, this is aimed at action researchers who are targeting at involving stakeholders and their expert knowledge in generating knowledge about their own condition and how it can be changed. The core philosophy of our research approach can be described as developing a powerful combination between practice-driven collaborative action research and theoretically-informed scientific research. Collaborative action research means that we take guidance from the hotspots as the primary source of questions, dilemmas and empirical data regarding the governance of adaptation, but also collaborate with them in testing insights and strategies, and evaluating their usefulness. The purpose is to develop effective, legitimate and resilient governance arrangements for climate adaptation. Scientific quality will be achieved by placing this co-production of knowledge in a well-founded and innovative theoretical framework, and through the involvement of the international consortium partners. This position paper provides a methodological starting point of the research program ‘Governance of Climate Adaptation’ and aims: · To clarify the theoretical foundation of collaborative action research and the underlying ontological and epistemological principles · To give an historical overview of the development of action research and its different forms · To enhance the theoretical foundation of collaborative action research in the specific context of governance of climate adaptation. · To translate the philosophy of collaborative action research into practical methods; · To give an overview of the main conditions and pitfalls for action research in complex governance settings Finally, this position paper provides three key instruminstruments developed to support Action Research in the hotspots: 1) Toolbox for AR in hotspots (chapter 6); 2) Set-up of a research design and action plan for AR in hotspots (chapter 7); 3) Quality checklist or guidance for AR in hotspots (chapter 8)