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International audience ; Direct democracy is often proposed as a possible solution to the 21st-century problems of democracy. However, this suggestion clashes with the size and complexity of 21st-century societies, entailing an excessive cognitive burden on voters, who would have to submit informed opinions on an excessive number of issues. In this paper I argue for the development of "voting avatars", autonomous agents debating and voting on behalf of each citizen. Theoretical research from artificial intelligence, and in particular multiagent systems and computational social choice, proposes 21st-century techniques for this purpose, from the compact representation of a voter's preferences and values, to the development of voting procedures for autonomous agents use only.

International audience ; Direct democracy is often proposed as a possible solution to the 21st-century problems of democracy. However, this suggestion clashes with the size and complexity of 21st-century societies, entailing an excessive cognitive burden on voters, who would have to submit informed opinions on an excessive number of issues. In this paper I argue for the development of "voting avatars", autonomous agents debating and voting on behalf of each citizen. Theoretical research from artificial intelligence, and in particular multiagent systems and computational social choice, proposes 21st-century techniques for this purpose, from the compact representation of a voter's preferences and values, to the development of voting procedures for autonomous agents use only.

This book offers a comprehensive overview and critique of the most important political and philosophical interpretations of the basic results of social choice, assessing their plausibility and seeking to identify the links between the theory of social choice and the more traditional issues of political theory and philosophy. In this regard, the author eschews a strong methodological commitment or technical formalism; the approach is instead based on the presentation of political facts and illustrated via numerous real-life examples. This allows the reader to get acquainted with the philosophical and political dispute surrounding voting and collective decision-making and its links to social choice theory.

Intro -- COWLES COMMISSION FOR RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS -- DEDICATION -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION -- 1. THE TYPES OF SOCIAL CHOICE -- 2. SOME LIMITATIONS OF THE ANALYSIS -- CHAPTER II - THE NATURE OF PREFERENCE AND CHOICE -- 1. MEASURABILITY AND INTERPERSONAL COMPARABILITY OF UTILITY -- 2. A NOTATION FOR PREFERENCES AND CHOICE -- 3. THE ORDERING OF SOCIAL STATES -- 4. A DIGRESSION ON RATIONALITY AND CHOICE -- CHAPTER III - THE SOCIAL WELFARE FUNCTION -- 1. FORMAL STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL CHOICE -- 2. POSITIVE ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL VALUES -- 3. THE INDEPENDENCE OF IRRELEVANT ALTERNATIVES -- 4. THE CONDITION OF CITIZENS' SOVEREIGNTY -- 5. THE CONDITION OF NON-DICTATORSHIP -- 6. THE SUMMATION OF UTILITIES -- CHAPTER IV - THE COMPENSATION PRINCIPLE -- 1. THE PAYMENT OF COMPENSATION -- 2. THE POSSIBILITY OF COMPENSATION -- CHAPTER V - THE GENERAL POSSIBILITY THEOREM FOR SOCIAL WELFARE FUNCTIONS -- 1. THE NUMBER OF ALTERNATIVES -- 2. TWO INDIVIDUALS AND THREE ALTERNATIVES -- 3. PROOF OF THE GENERAL POSSIBILITY THEOREM -- 4. INTERPRETATION OF THE GENERAL POSSIBILITY THEOREM -- CHAPTER VI - THE INDIVIDUALISTIC ASSUMPTIONS -- 1. STATEMENT OF THE ASSUMPTIONS -- 2. THE POSSIBILITY THEOREM UNDER INDIVIDUALISTIC ASSUMPTIONS -- 3. QUASI-ORDERINGS AND COMPATIBLE WEAK ORDERINGS -- 4. AN EXAMPLE -- 5. A ONE-COMMODITY WORLD -- 6. GROUP CHOICE IN THE THEORY OF GAMES -- 7. DISTRIBUTIONAL ETHICS COMBINED WITH INDIVIDUALISM -- CHAPTER VII - SIMILARITY AS THE BASIS OF SOCIAL WELFARE JUDGMENTS -- 1. COMPLETE UNANIMITY -- 2. THE CASE OF SINGLE-PEAKED PREFERENCES -- 3. THE IDEALIST POSITION AND THE CONCEPT OF CONSENSUS -- 4. KNOWLEDGE AND THE MEANING OF SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES -- 5. PARTIAL UNANIMITY -- 6. THE DECISION PROCESS AS A VALUE -- REFERENCES.

Constitutional scholars do not typically employ spatial reasoning in their work. And yet, constitutional jurisprudence and much work in judicial politics implicitly rest on assumptions best cast in spatial terms. These include assuming that positions in constitutional disputes, and the views of Supreme Court justices, generally lie along a common liberal-to-conservative ideological dimension. Although the single dimension assumption is often appropriate, it suffers inherent limitations. First, Supreme Court decision-making rules, both within and across cases, expose problems of dimensionality. Second, important substantive doctrines likewise reveal dimensionality. Third, and finally, throughout the Supreme Court's history, positions deemed liberal (or conservative) in one period have emerged as conservative (or liberal) in a later period, suggesting that dimensionality is a persistent feature in our jurisprudential history. Social choice proves uniquely suited to explaining these important aspects of constitutional law. After briefly introducing the discipline of constitutional law and its relationship to social choice, this article offers three illustrations of how social choice analysis deepens our understanding of important substantive areas. The analysis exposes dimensionality within Supreme Court decision-making rules, within separation-of-powers doctrine, and over historical shifts in the liberal and conservative valence of once-prominent jurisprudential positions. Failing to appreciate dimensionality, which lies at the core of social choice theory, when studying the Supreme Court and constitutional law risks a truly one-dimensional understanding of a richer and multidimensional institution and body of doctrine. Adapted from the source document.

The means used in an election system to evaluate alternative systems, that is, conditions on social choice functions, are examined. "A condition on a social choice function is an if-then statement which specifies that if a certain designated relationship exists then some particular alternative or alternatives are not in the social choice set." The conditions in the social choice literature are compiled & the relationships among these conditions are presented. Nearly all conditions are classified into three groups, & these are then subdivided. Among the types of conditions discussed are those referred to as ethical, aggregation, & rationality conditions, all of which are dealt with separately. Further research in the area is encouraged. 9 Figures. G. Simpson.

Behavioral economics has shaken the view that individuals have well-defined, consistent and stable preferences. This raises a challenge for welfare economics, which takes as a key postulate that individual preferences should be respected. We agree with Bernheim (2009) and Bernheim and Rangel (2009) that behavioral economics is compatible with consistency of partial preferences and that subjective welfare measures do not offer an attractive way out of the impasse. However, their analysis which rests on traditional concepts like Pareto optimality and compensation tests, is not adequate to introduce distributional considerations. We explore how partial preferences can be introduced in the recent theory of welfare that has developed from the theory of fair allocation. We revisit the key results of that theory in a framework with partial preferences and show how one can derive partial orderings of individual and social situations.

U ovome radu bavimo se pitanjem kako preferencije skupine individualaca spojiti u jednu preferenciju koja bi najbolje opisivala preferenciju društva. Na početku, u prvom poglavlju upoznajemo se s nekim od najpoznatijih načina glasovanja i problemima koji se javljaju prilikom primjene istih. U drugom poglavlju razmatramo funkciju društvenog blagostanja koja profile preferencije svih individualaca u društvu preslikava u jednu relaciju preferencije. Pokazujemo da kada postoje tri ili više alternative, ne postoji funkcija društvenog blagostanja koja zadovoljava određene uvjete. Zatim u trećem poglavlju se bavimo funkcijom društvenog izbora koja sve profile preferencije skupine individualaca preslikava u jednu alternativu, i to onu koja bi društvu bila najpoželjnija. Tu također pokazujemo da takva funkcija ne postoji u slučaju kada imamo tri ili više alternativa i određene uvjete koje bismo htjeli da funkcija zadovoljava. U četvrtom poglavlju, u obzir uzimamo i mogućnost manipulativnosti, odnosno gledamo što se događa ako individualci iskažu preferencije koje se razlikuju od njihovih stvarnih preferencija. Na kraju, u petom poglavlju razmatramo slučaj ponderiranog glasovanja, gdje svaki individualac na raspolaganju ima određen broj glasova koji mu je dodijeljen prema nekim pravilima te proučavamo dva načina na koja možemo odrediti koliku moć ima odredeni individualac u takvim sustavima glasovanja. ; In this thesis we deal with the question of how to aggregate preferences of a group of individuals into a single preference that would best describe preference of the society. At the beginning, in the first chapter we meet some of the most famous voting systems and problems encountered when applying them. In the second chapter, we consider the social welfare function which maps profile preferences of all individuals into one preference relation. We show that when there are three or more alternatives, there is no social welfare function that meets certain conditions. Then, in the third chapter, we're dealing with a social ...

Optimal economic growth deals with the problem of how societies make tradeoffs between current & future consumption, or equivalently, how societies make decisions about investment rates. Social choice theorists have thrown doubt on the concept of societal utility function. Optimal growth is suggested to be a problem in social choice theory. Assuming that citizens have preferences over the various growth plans, under what conditions will a majority rule equilibrium exist? It is shown that such an equilibrium can exist for a Ramsey-type problem (Ramsey, F., "A Mathematical Theory of Saving," Economic Journal, 1928, 38, 543-559). 1 Figure. Modified HA.