Representative democracy and the implementation of majority-preferred alternatives

In this paper, we contrast direct and representative democracy. In a direct democracy, individuals have the opportunity to vote over the alternatives in every choice problem the population faces. In a representative democracy, the population commits to a candidate ex ante who will then make choices on its behalf. While direct democracy is normatively appealing, representative democracy is the far more common institution because of its practical advantages. The key question, then, is whether representative democracy succeeds in implementing the choices that the group would make under direct democracy. We find that, in general, it does not. We analyze the theoretical setting in which the two methods are most likely to lead to the same choices, minimizing potential sources of distortion. We model a population as a distribution of voters with strict preferences over a finite set of alternatives and a candidate as an ordering of those alternatives that serves as a binding, contingent plan of action. We focus on the case where the direct democracy choices of the population are consistent with an ordering of the alternatives. We show that even in this case, where the normative recommendation of direct democracy is clear, representative democracy may not elect the candidate with this ordering

Plural Voting for the Twenty-First Century

Recent political developments cast doubt on the wisdom of democratic decision-making. Brexit, the Colombian people's (initial) rejection of peace with the FARC, and the election of Donald Trump suggest that the time is right to explore alternatives to democracy. In this essay, I describe and defend the epistocratic system of government which is, given current theoretical and empirical knowledge, most likely to produce optimal political outcomes—or at least better outcomes than democracy produces. To wit, we should expand the suffrage as wide as possible and weight citizens’ votes in accordance with their competence. As it turns out, the optimal system is closely related to J. S. Mill's plural voting proposal. I also explain how voters’ competences can be precisely determined, without reference to an objective standard of correctness and without generating invidious comparisons between voters

Staging European Union Democracy: Discussion Paper Prepared for the 'Round Table on a Sustainable Project for Europe'. EPIN Working Paper No. 10, December 2003

Much of the malaise surrounding EU democracy can be accounted for by the fact that there is no effective staging of political debate between the European Parliament and EU executive power. This paper explores the options to increase the visibility of political choices in the European Union, to open ways to have political positions challenged and, thereby, to improve the staging of the democratic process. It starts from the relationship between the European Parliament and the Commission as this is the relationship that has come to resemble most the dynamics of representative democracy at the EU level. In turn, possible reforms are then explored to strengthen the articulation of political alternatives in the European Parliament, to allow for a well-calibrated politicisation of the Commission and to subject EU executive powers beyond the Commission to democratic accountability. The paper concludes with 20 concrete recommendations for reform – some of which would preferably still be taken on board by the current Intergovernmental Conference, but most of which can be followed up upon by the European actors in the years to come

Direct Democracy Versus Representative Democracy: A Theoretical Approach

Fecha de Lectura de Tesis Doctoral: 12 Diciembre 2019The main purpose of this PhD dissertation is to compare the systems of direct and representative democracy from a theoretical point of view. Faced with the undeniable success and popular acceptance of instruments of direct democracy such as referendums and popular consultations when making decisions, a very natural first question is when voters prefer a system of direct democracy or a system of representative democracy. In Chapter 1, we propose a model to investigate under which conditions voters prefer either one or the other system. We show that direct democracy is the preferred instrument for collective choices in societies in which the populist rhetoric of people against the elite succeeds. We also find that the demand for direct democracy is increasing in the polarization of the electorate. The success of direct democracy is recently resulting in the emergence of social movements and political parties asking for the direct participation of citizens in the decision making process. These groups highlight the inability of representative democracy to implement what the majority of people desires for each issue that comes up for discussion. In Chapter 2, we study under which conditions direct democracy and representative democracy may be equivalent in terms of outcomes. We find that this equivalence becomes less likely to be held the more divided the electorate in evaluating which are the more relevant issues for the society and the less polarized are the politicians. Concerning how voters’ preferences are aggregated, in Chapter 3 we consider a class of preference aggregation mechanisms, known as scoring rules, and show that none of them is guaranteed to select the Condorcet winner from among the set of alternatives at every profile of preferences, except in very specific cases

The Dual Path Initiative Framework

This thesis, conducted at Norconsult Astando AB, investigates and finds the best performing algorithm for routing in a road network given a set of constraints. The constraintsare mainly performance oriented and also the algorithm must not be too complex to implement. A study of algorithms was conducted and the most promising candidate, Contraction Hierarchies, was selectedfor implementation. Experiments suggest that Contraction Hierarchies perform as theoretically expected. Contraction Hierarchies is recommended as the algorithmthat best satisfies the constraints.Ruttning i ett vägnät: Hitta en enkelt implementerbar algoritm utifrån prestandakrav. Detta examensarbete, utfört på Norconsult AstandoAB, ämnar att hitta den bäst presterande algoritm för ruttning i ett vägnät utifrån ett antal restriktioner. Restriktionerna är mestadels prestanda men även att algoritmen inte får vara för komplicerad att implementera. Det gjordes en studie av algoritmer för att hitta den bästa kandidaten. Contraction Hierarchies var den mest lovande och utvaldes för implementation. Praktiska experiment antyder att Contraction Hierarchies presterar som teoretiskt förväntat. Contraction Hierarchies rekommenderas som den algoritm som bäst uppfyller alla restriktioner

The Dual Path Initiative Framework

No abstract

On the Weights of Nations: Assigning Voting Weights in a Heterogeneous Union

Consider a voting procedure where countries, states, or districts comprising a union each elect representatives who then participate in later votes at the union level on their behalf. The countries, provinces, and states may vary in their populations and composition. If we wish to maximize the total expected utility of all agents in the union, how to weight the votes of the representatives of the different countries, states or districts at the union level? We provide a simple characterization of the efficient voting rule in terms of the weights assigned to different districts and the voting threshold (how large a qualified majority is needed to induce change versus the status quo). Next, in the context of a model of the correlation structure of agents preferences, we analyze how voting weights relate to the population size of a country. We then analyze the voting weights in Council of the European Union under the Nice Treaty and the recently proposed constitution, and contrast them under different versions of our model, and compare them to the weights derived from poll data.Majority rule, Voting, Weighted voting, European Union

Constitutional Design and Political Communication

This paper models the constitutional design process, and points out the importance of political communication (defined as the level of information about the social distribution of policy preferences that individuals hold, at the time of this process) on the "extent" of "democratic restraints" of the socially preferred constitution and on the welfare derived by the society from its implementation. The results demonstrate that the level of political communication has a positive effect on the level of democracy of the socially preferred constitution and on social welfare. Moreover, it is proved that, even if there exist no tolerance for dictatorship by societies in general, the level of democracy demanded by the society, reaches the maximum possible level, only if political communication is "perfect". That is, the socially preferred constitution in cases of "imperfect" political communication incorporates both dictatorial and democratic elements.constitution, political communication, democracy

Voting over piece-wise linear tax methods

We analyze the problem of choosing the most appropriate method for apportioning taxes in a democracy. We consider a simple model of taxation and restrict our attention to piece- wise linear tax methods, which are almost ubiquitous in advanced democracies worldwide. In spite of facing an impossibility result saying that if we allow agents to vote for any piece-wise linear tax method no equilibrium exists, we show that if we limit the domain of admissible methods in a meaningful way, albeit not restrictive, an equilibrium does exist. We also show that, for such a domain, a wide variety of methods can be supported in equilibrium. This last result provides rationale for some activities of special interest groups.voting, taxes, majority, single crossing, special interest politics

Voting over piece-wise linear tax methods

We analyze the problem of choosing the most appropriate method for apportioning taxes in a democracy. We consider a simple model of taxation and restrict our attention to piece-wise linear tax methods, which are almost ubiquitous in advanced democracies worldwide. In spite of facing an impossibility result saying that if we allow agents to vote for any piece-wise linear tax method no equilibrium exists, we show that if we limit the domain of admissible methods in a meaningful way, albeit not restrictive, an equilibrium does exist. We also show that, for such a domain, a wide variety of methods can be supported in equilibrium. This last result provides rationale for some activities of special interest groups.voting, taxes, majority, single crossing, special interest politics.