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Weighted representative democracy

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  • Pivato, Marcus
  • Soh, Arnold

Abstract

We propose a new system of democratic representation. Any voter can choose any legislator as her representative; thus, different legislators can represent different numbers of voters. Decisions in the legislature are made by weighted majority voting, where the weight of each legislator is determined by the number of voters she represents. We show that, if the size of the electorate is very large, then with very high probability, the decisions obtained in the legislature agree with those which would have been reached by a popular referendum decided by simple majority vote.

Suggested Citation

  • Pivato, Marcus & Soh, Arnold, 2020. "Weighted representative democracy," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 52-63.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:mateco:v:88:y:2020:i:c:p:52-63
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmateco.2020.03.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ben Abramowitz & Nicholas Mattei, 2022. "Towards Group Learning: Distributed Weighting of Experts," Papers 2206.02566, arXiv.org.
    2. Reshef Meir & Fedor Sandomirskiy & Moshe Tennenholtz, 2020. "Representative Committees of Peers," Papers 2006.07837, arXiv.org.
    3. Arnold Cédrick SOH VOUTSA, 2020. "Approval Voting & Majority Judgment in Weighted Representative Democracy," THEMA Working Papers 2020-15, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    4. Ben Abramowitz & Omer Lev & Nicholas Mattei, 2022. "Who Reviews The Reviewers? A Multi-Level Jury Problem," Papers 2211.08494, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    5. Hans Gersbach, 2022. "New Forms of Democracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 10134, CESifo.

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