• Delegative or liquid democracy

    • A balance or midpoint between direct & representative democracy

      • Direct participation vs the limits of human time and attention

      • O(n) participants x O(n) topics = O(n2) attention deficit problem

    • Key idea: give people more free, dynamic choice of representation

      • Participate and vote directly when you want and have time

      • Delegate to a chosen representative, but revoke at any time

      • Free choice of representative: can be trusted friend or neighbor

      • Different choices of delegation (or not) on different topics

    • History: Lewis Caroll, Gordon Mohr, then explosion in early 2000s

    • Some prototypes supporting delegative democracy

      • LiquidFeedback

      • Adhocracy

      • Democracy.OS

    • Voter-delegate interaction

      • Ideal: shift from distant “celebrity” representative to social advisor

      • Does delegate serve in mandate or representative role?

        • Mandate: carry out the voter’s stated will or preference

        • Representative: learn situation and decide for the voter

        • Or both?

      • Delegate acquires more voting weight, but must “answer for” it

        • Threat of revocation always present, but only the blunt instrument

        • Delegate’s job is to balance demands of voters vs reality

          • Consider what voters want, and what’s “good” for them

        • Engage in two-way communication:

          • Receive preference information from voters

          • Explain situation and decision to voters

    • Delegation design space

      • “One-hop” or transitive delegation?

        • One-hop: simplest to understand and perhaps to justify

        • Transitive: may be necessary for scalability of structure

      • Single-choice or multi-choice?

        • Single-choice: simplest, but risks accidental concentration

        • Multi-choice: spreads voting power among qualified delegates

      • How to split a multi-choice delegation?

        • Rank-order style: possible, but doesn’t solve concentration

        • Approval style: split vote equally among chosen delegates

        • Share style: split vote in shares defining ratio

        • Quadratic: split vote to reward & incentivize spreading

      • What about delegation cycles?

        • Could just “expire”, but risks wasted votes

        • PageRank/Viscous Democracy/Linear Programming style

          • Impose “resistance” factor on each delegation step

          • Iteratively solve linear equations

    • Further issues and challenges

      • Vote privacy versus accountability

      • Super-delegates as “accidental dictators”

      • Identity and registration: accountability versus anonymity

      • Secure and trustworthy implementations, centralized vs decentralized


Post-lecture blackboard snapshot 2019:



Last modified: Thursday, 22 October 2020, 16:05