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Consistent Representative Democracy
Paper Number: 1217
Date: 03/01/2005
Abstract:
We study axioms which define "representative democracy" in an environment in which agents vote over a finite set of alternatives. We focus on a property that states that whether votes are aggregated directly or indirectly make no difference. We call this property 'representative consistency'. 'Representative consistency' formalizes the idea that a voting rule should be immune to gerrymandering. We characterize the class of rules satisfying 'unanimity, anonymity,' and 'representative consistency'. We call these rules "partial priority rules." A partial priority rule can be interpreted as a rule in which each agent can "veto" certain alternatives. We investigate the implications of imposing other axioms to the list specified above. We also study the partial priority rules in the context of specific economic models.
Paper Length: 28 pages
Paper: wp1217.pdf