Foundations of Interactive Democracy

这个项目研究互动民主的公理和计算基础。互动民主（互动式民主）是一个总称，涵盖了使民主进程更具参与性和响应性的各种方法。这些方法的一个共同目标是利用现代信息技术——特别是因特网——以实现更具互动性的决策过程。许多ID提案的一个组成部分是在线决策平台，它提供了比传统民主系统更大的灵活性和互动可能性。在线决策平台的成功设计对多学科研究提出了挑战；偏好聚合理论（又名社会选择理论）似乎特别相关。然而，现有的ID建议大多与大量关于偏好聚合的科学文献脱节。拟议的项目旨在通过探索如何利用基于数学的投票理论来帮助设计在线决策平台和其他ID工具来解决这个问题。在对ID的投票理论方面进行严格的基础分析时，公理和计算技术都将发挥至关重要的作用。计算社会选择是计算机科学和经济学交叉的一个新兴研究领域，它将与这一努力特别相关。

This project studies axiomatic and computational foundations of Interactive Democracy. Interactive Democracy (ID) is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of approaches to make democratic processes more engaging and responsive. A common goal of these approaches is to utilize modern information technology---in particular, the Internet---in order to enable more interactive decision making processes.An integral part of many ID proposals are online decision platforms that provide much more flexibility and interaction possibilities than traditional democratic systems. The successful design of online decision platforms presents a multidisciplinary research challenge; the theory of preference aggregation (aka social choice theory) seems particularly relevant. However, existing ID proposals are mostly disconnected from the vast body of scientific literature on preference aggregation.The proposed project aims to remedy this by exploring how mathematically grounded voting theory can be employed to aid the design of online decision platforms and other ID tools. Both axiomatic and computational techniques will play a vital role in this rigorous foundational analysis of the voting-theoretic aspects of ID. Insights from computational social choice, an emerging research area at the intersection of computer science and economics, will be particularly relevant for this endeavor.