Abstract
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 model a population as a distribution of voters with strict preferences over a finite set of alternatives and a candidate as a strict 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 a strict ordering of the alternatives. We show that even in this case, where the normative recommendation of direct democracy is clearest, representative democracy may not elect the candidate with this ordering.
Highlights
Direct democracy is a fundamental principle of collective decision-making
Just over half of the states in the United States allow for recalls and/or popular referendums and no forms of direct democracy exist at the federal level (NCSL.org)
Most well-behaved populations, where majority preferences over the alternatives are consistent with a strict ordering, representative democracy may not elect the candidate with this ordering
Summary
Direct democracy is a fundamental principle of collective decision-making. When a choice problem arrives, individuals should have the opportunity to express preferences over the alternatives. We assume that when a choice problem of alternatives arrives, the social decision is made according to the ordering of the elected candidate.[3] The key modeling assumption is how individuals vote over candidates. In a comparison of two candidates, the winning candidate is the candidate who earns a majority of the population’s votes: the candidate with whom the majority of the population is closer to according to the Kemeny distance This type of political action generates a tournament over the candidates. We ...nd that for problems with a small number of alternatives, representative democracy does succeed in electing candidates that implement the choices made under direct democracy. Most well-behaved populations, where majority preferences over the alternatives are consistent with a strict ordering, representative democracy may not elect the candidate with this ordering. We discuss related works that highlight the more general di¢ culty in identifying forms of representative democracy that are consistent with direct democracy
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