Power in Liquid Democracy
This work addresses power dynamics in liquid democracy, an incremental contribution to voting theory with potential implications for political science and computational social choice.
The paper tackles the problem of measuring influence in delegable proxy voting systems by defining a power index for voters and delegators, and extends a game-theoretic model to analyze power-seeking behavior, finding results on Nash equilibria and power inequalities through simulations.
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 relevant parameters on the emergence of power inequalities in the model.