Liquid Democracy Research Articles

Flexible representative democracy

AbstractWe introduce Flexible Representative Democracy (FRD), a novel hybrid of Representative Democracy and Direct Democracy in which voters can alter the issue-dependent weights of a set of elected representatives. In line with the literature on Interactive Democracy, our model allows the voters to actively determine the degree to which the system is direct versus representative. However, unlike Liquid Democracy, Flexible Representative Democracy uses strictly non-transitive delegations, making delegation cycles impossible, and maintains a fixed set of accountable, elected representatives. We present Flexible Representative Democracy and analyze it using a computational approach with issues that are binary and symmetric. We compare the outcomes of various voting systems using Direct Democracy with majority voting as an ideal baseline. First, we demonstrate the shortcomings of Representative Democracy in our model. We provide NP-Hardness results for electing an ideal set of representatives, discuss pathologies, and demonstrate empirically that common multi-winner election rules for selecting representatives do not perform well in expectation. To analyze the effects of adding delegation to representative voting systems, we begin by providing theoretical results on how issue-specific delegations determine outcomes. Finally, we provide empirical results comparing the outcomes of various voting systems: Representative Democracy, Proxy Voting, and FRD with issue-specific delegations. Our results show that variants of Proxy Voting yield no discernible benefit over unweighted representatives and reveal the potential for Flexible Representative Democracy to improve outcomes as voter participation increases.

Unravelling Expressive Delegations: Complexity and Normative Analysis

We consider binary group decision-making under a rich model of liquid democracy: agents submit ranked delegation options, where each option may be a function of multiple agents' votes; e.g., "I vote yes if a majority of my friends vote yes." Such ballots are unravelled into a profile of direct votes by selecting one entry from each ballot so as not to introduce cyclic dependencies. We study delegation via monotonic Boolean functions, and two unravelling procedures: MinSum, which minimises the sum of the ranks of the chosen entries, and its egalitarian counterpart, MinMax. We provide complete computational dichotomies: MinSum is hard to compute (and approximate) as soon as any non-trivial functions are permitted, and polynomial otherwise; for MinMax the easiness results extend to arbitrary-arity logical ORs and ANDs taken in isolation, but not beyond. For the classic model of delegating to individual agents, we give asymptotically near-tight algorithms for carrying out the two procedures and efficient algorithms for finding optimal unravellings with the highest vote count for a given alternative. These algorithms inspire novel tie-breaking rules for the setup of voting to change a status quo. We then introduce a new axiom, which can be viewed as a variant of the participation axiom, and use algorithmic techniques developed earlier in the paper to show that it is satisfied by MinSum and a lexicographic refinement of MinMax (but not MinMax itself).

Enhancing the democratic nature of voting processes within decentralized autonomous organizations

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the problem of power imbalance within decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and propose potential solutions that could contribute to enhancing the democratic nature of DAOs.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the authors apply a qualitative methodology. Using a thematic coding analysis, the authors process data collected from interviews with 11 experts.FindingsMultiple factors contribute to the perceived lack of democracy within DAOs, such as token concentration and effective stakeholder communication. Next, quadratic voting has the potential to enhance democracy within DAOs, but this mechanism must be implemented mindfully. Finally, the results were nuanced when it comes to the effectiveness of liquid democracy in DAOs to enhance voter participation and representation.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first research contributions to propose recommendations to address the power imbalance within DAOs and to contribute to the advancement of decentralized decision-making structures.

Liquid Democracy as a Solution to the Legitimacy Crisis of Liberal Democracy: Its Value and Applicability at the National Scale

Demokrasi, kökenleri M.Ö. V. yüzyıla dayanan bir kavramdır. Ancak iki bin beş yüz yıllık geçmişine rağmen içeriğine yönelik tartışmalar güncelliğini korumaktadır. Nitekim bu süreç boyunca demokrasiden anlaşılan hep farklı olmuştur. Bu kapsamda Antik Yunan’da uygulanan demokrasi ile günümüzde hâkim olan liberal demokrasi yaklaşımı arasında büyük farklar bulunmaktadır. Bunlardan en belirgin olanı çağımızda doğrudan demokrasi uygulamalarının oldukça sınırlı kalması ve temsili demokrasinin yaygınlık kazanmasıdır. Bu büyük ayrışma demokrasinin hem kavramsal sınırlarının tam olarak çizilemediğini hem de hala değişme potansiyeline sahip olduğunu göstermektedir. Öyle ki seçimlere olan ilginin her geçen gün daha fazla azalması liberal demokrasinin bir meşruiyet krizi içinde olduğuna dair tartışmaları artırmaktadır. Bu noktada teorisi oldukça eskiye dayanıyor olsa da XXI. yüzyılda Korsan Parti hareketi ile gündeme gelen akışkan demokrasi modelinin liberal demokrasinin krizine çare olacağı savunulmaktadır. Zira bu yeni demokrasi tipi vatandaşlara demokratik süreçlere sadece temsilciler aracılığı ile değil, doğrudan katılım imkânı da sunmaktadır. Diğer taraftan oyların geçişliliği ya da herhangi bir seçim periyodu beklenmeksizin geri çekilebilmesi gibi özellikleri ile aktif bir siyasal yaşam vaat etmektedir. Ancak tüm bu olumlu özelliklerine rağmen akışkan demokrasi, siyaseti değerlerinden arındırarak günlük yaşama indirgemektedir. Üstelik elinde çok sayıda oy toplayan temsilcilerin sisteme egemen olma riski de bulunmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda çalışmada akışkan demokrasi teorisinin genel çerçevesi ve ulusal ölçekte liberal demokrasinin meşruiyet krizine çözüm olup olamayacağı sorusu tartışılacaktır.

The Liquid Proposal Facing Democratic Challenges

The objective is to show how Liquid Democracy intends to assume the sine qua non conditions of a true democracy and undertake the democratic challenges to achieve a good democratic quality. The conceptual analysis methodology reviews the origin and modalities of Liquid Democracy to evaluate it against the requirements indicated by Morlino and examine its possibilities through the challenges described by Linz and the dangers exposed by Levitsky and Ziblatt. The results present the level of quality attainable by liquid modalities. In contemporary conditions, the analysis also detects the confusion of Liquid Democracy with Electronic Democracy and the risks that both have acquiring technocracy seeking technopolitics. The originality of the analysis includes links to patterns of algorithmic democracy and artificial intelligence. In conclusion the article shows the value of the liquid model and elements of its political and communicative quality. The conclusions also point to some opportunities to improve democracy.

Liquid Democracy with Ranked Delegations

Liquid democracy is a novel paradigm for collective decision-making that gives agents the choice between casting a direct vote or delegating their vote to another agent. We consider a generalization of the standard liquid democracy setting by allowing agents to specify multiple potential delegates, together with a preference ranking among them. This generalization increases the number of possible delegation paths and enables higher participation rates because fewer votes are lost due to delegation cycles or abstaining agents. In order to implement this generalization of liquid democracy, we need to find a principled way of choosing between multiple delegation paths. In this paper, we provide a thorough axiomatic analysis of the space of delegation rules, i.e., functions assigning a feasible delegation path to each delegating agent. In particular, we prove axiomatic characterizations as well as an impossibility result for delegation rules. We also analyze requirements on delegation rules that have been suggested by practitioners, and introduce novel rules with attractive properties. By performing an extensive experimental analysis on synthetic as well as real-world data, we compare delegation rules with respect to several quantitative criteria relating to the chosen paths and the resulting distribution of voting power. Our experiments reveal that delegation rules can be aligned on a spectrum reflecting an inherent trade-off between competing objectives.

Public Financing beyond participatory budgeting: The quantum budget

The idea of so-called “Participatory Budgeting” (PB) has recently re-entered the modern political discourse. Major metropoles, such as New York, are making progress beyond mere piloting by paving the road for mandatory PB with new legislation, while communities of various sizes and politicians of various ranks all around the world aim to follow suit in an attempt to maintain an image of democratic progress. This paper shall scrutinize PB and provide a critique of PB from the perspective of democratic innovation. Another concept for increasing democratic power of citizens shall be described – the Quantum Budget. The Quantum Budget is an innovative way of funding communal projects that bases on Liquid Democracy. The paper will compare the Quantum Budget to Participatory Budgeting and provide a discussion on their potentials and weaknesses.

A Liquid Democracy Enabled Blockchain-Based Electronic Voting System

Developing an electronic voting system that meets the practical needs of administrators has been a difficult task for a long time. Now, blockchain technologies solve this problem by providing a distributed ledger with immutable, encrypted, and secure transactions. Distributed ledger technologies are an interesting technological leap in the field of data innovation, transparency, and trustability. In public blockchain, distributed ledger technology is widely used. The blockchain technology can be used in an almost infinite number of ways to benefit from sharing economies. The purpose of this study is to assess how blockchain may be utilized to build electronic voting systems that can be used as a service. The purpose of electronic voting systems is explained in this article, as are the technological and legal limitations of employing blockchain as a service. Then, using blockchain as a foundation, we propose a new electronic voting system that fixes the flaws we observed. In general, this paper evaluates the capabilities of distributed ledger technologies by depicting a contextual investigation in order to fine-tune the process of political election decisions and employing a blockchain-based application that improves security and lowers the cost of conducting nationwide elections.

Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting

Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting

Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting

Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting

Unravelling multi-agent ranked delegations

We introduce a voting model with multi-agent ranked delegations. This model generalises liquid democracy in two aspects: first, an agent’s delegation can use the votes of multiple other agents to determine their own—for instance, an agent’s vote may correspond to the majority outcome of the votes of a trusted group of agents; second, agents can submit a ranking over multiple delegations, so that a backup delegation can be used when their preferred delegations are involved in cycles. The main focus of this paper is the study of unravelling procedures that transform the delegation ballots received from the agents into a profile of direct votes, from which a winning alternative can then be determined by using a standard voting rule. We propose and study six such unravelling procedures, two based on optimisation and four using a greedy approach. We study both algorithmic and axiomatic properties, as well as related computational complexity problems of our unravelling procedures for different restrictions on the types of ballots that the agents can submit.

Clarifying and Defining the Concept of Liquid Democracy

AbstractLiquid Democracy (LD) is a recent phenomenon that could radically affect our understanding of democracy. Yet, there remains significant semantic confusion surrounding this concept, and researchers in the social sciences, as well as in political theory, currently lack a general definition that is broadly accepted as a standard reference. Therefore, this article addresses the following question: What is LD and how can we best define it? Following a classical, semantic approach to concept formation in the tradition of Giovanni Sartori and John Gerring, the article advances a new, minimal definition: LD is a decision‐making scheme characterized by liquidity—that is the systemic and flexible mix of direct and representative democracy—and essentially based on the principles of voluntary delegation and proxy voting. This definition can serve as a starting point from which further theoretical and normative studies of LD could be conducted in the future.

The Fluid Mechanics of Liquid Democracy

Liquid democracy is the principle of making collective decisions by letting agents transitively delegate their votes. Despite its significant appeal, it has become apparent that a weakness of liquid democracy is that a small subset of agents may gain massive influence. To address this, we propose to change the current practice by allowing agents to specify multiple delegation options instead of just one. Much like in nature, where—fluid mechanics teaches us—liquid maintains an equal level in connected vessels, we seek to control the flow of votes in a way that balances influence as much as possible. Specifically, we analyze the problem of choosing delegations to approximately minimize the maximum number of votes entrusted to any agent by drawing connections to the literature on confluent flow. We also introduce a random graph model for liquid democracy and use it to demonstrate the benefits of our approach both theoretically and empirically.

Popular branchings and their dual certificates

Let G be a digraph where every node has preferences over its incoming edges. The preferences of a node extend naturally to preferences over branchings, i.e., directed forests; a branching B is popular if B does not lose a head-to-head election (where nodes cast votes) against any branching. Such popular branchings have a natural application in liquid democracy. The popular branching problem is to decide if G admits a popular branching or not. We give a characterization of popular branchings in terms of dual certificates and use this characterization to design an efficient combinatorial algorithm for the popular branching problem. When preferences are weak rankings, we use our characterization to formulate the popular branching polytope in the original space and also show that our algorithm can be modified to compute a branching with least unpopularity margin. When preferences are strict rankings, we show that “approximately popular” branchings always exist.

Power in Liquid Democracy

The paper develops a theory of power for delegable proxy voting systems. We define a power index able to measure the influence of both voters and delegators. Using this index, which we characterize axiomatically, we extend an earlier game-theoretic model by incorporating power-seeking behavior by agents. We analytically study the existence of pure strategy Nash equilibria in such a model. Finally, by means of simulations, we study the effect of several parameters on the emergence of power inequalities in the model.

Political Representation in Liquid Democracy

This article provides an in-depth survey of political representation in Liquid Democracy (LD). More precisely, it refutes two potential criticisms: 1) LD impoverishes the concept of political representation relative to existing representative democracies; 2) LD undermines the centrality of political parties. In answer to (1), the article shows that LD is compatible with a selection model of representation, in which proxies are characterized as gyroscopic representatives, driven by intrinsic motivation and indifferent to sanctions. This claim has far-reaching normative implications for the mandate-independence tradeoff, anti-elitism, and deliberation under LD. With regard to (2), the article examines the function of parties, arguing that, although it puts parties and interest groups on a level playing field, LD does not threaten partisanship, but rather expands the range of potential carriers of partisanship. In addressing these objections, this article demonstrates the democratic credentials of LD, showing that LD is compatible with a high-quality, democratic understanding of representation, which is surrounded by a cluster of thick concepts like commitment, intrinsic motivation, alignment of objectives, sympathy, trust, and dialogue. This turns LD into a powerful instrument for the refurbishment of representation both as a unique mode of political participation and as a practice of self-government.

Liquid Democracy: An Algorithmic Perspective

We study liquid democracy, a collective decision making paradigm that allows voters to transitively delegate their votes, through an algorithmic lens. In our model, there are two alternatives, one correct and one incorrect, and we are interested in the probability that the majority opinion is correct. Our main question is whether there exist delegation mechanisms that are guaranteed to outperform direct voting, in the sense of being always at least as likely, and sometimes more likely, to make a correct decision. Even though we assume that voters can only delegate their votes to better-informed voters, we show that local delegation mechanisms, which only take the local neighborhood of each voter as input (and, arguably, capture the spirit of liquid democracy), cannot provide the foregoing guarantee. By contrast, we design a non-local delegation mechanism that does provably outperform direct voting under mild assumptions about voters.

A logical framework for democratic decision-making: epistemic logic and liquid democracy

Since Hintikka’s epistemic logic, the logic of knowledge, has been a subject of research in philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence and game theory. This paper presents a framework of dynamic epistemic logic capable of investigating interactive voting decisions in liquid democracy.

Ten years of liquid democracy research

Ten years have passed since in 2009 two independent technical systems pioneered liquid democracy (LD): Župa, a system developed for the Student Organisation of FIS in Slovenia, followed closely by LiquidFeedback, which served the Pirate Party in Berlin, Germany. First academic papers appeared in 2010 targeting the e-democracy research community, and later followed by researchers from artificial intelligence. This paper provides an overview of the scholarly discussions that developed in the past decade, and the technical implementations and initiatives that emerged.

Iterative Delegations in Liquid Democracy with Restricted Preferences

Liquid democracy is a collective decision making paradigm which lies between direct and representative democracy. One main feature of liquid democracy is that voters can delegate their votes in a transitive manner so that: A delegates to B and B delegates to C leads to A delegates to C. Unfortunately, because voters' preferences over delegates may be conflicting, this process may not converge. There may not even exist a stable state (also called equilibrium). In this paper, we investigate the stability of the delegation process in liquid democracy when voters have restricted types of preference on the agent representing them (e.g., single-peaked preferences). We show that various natural structures of preference guarantee the existence of an equilibrium and we obtain both tractability and hardness results for the problem of computing several equilibria with some desirable properties.