Mathematics and Democracy

Insight into the latest developments in the emerging, multidisciplinary science of voting systems and social choice With a broad view on real-life applications

Klappentext

In this book, different quantitative approaches to the study of electoral systems have been developed: game-theoretic, decision-theoretic, statistical, probabilistic, combinatorial, geometric, and optimization ones. All the authors are prominent scholars from these disciplines. Quantitative approaches offer a powerful tool to detect inconsistencies or poor performance in actual systems. Applications to concrete settings such as EU, American Congress, regional, and committee voting are discussed.

Inhalt
Power Indices Taking into Account Agents' Preferences.- The Sunfish Against the Octopus: Opposing Compactness to Gerrymandering.- Apportionment: Uni- and Bi-Dimensional.- Minimum Total Deviation Apportionments.- Comparison of Electoral Systems: Simulative and Game Theoretic Approaches.- How to Elect a Representative Committee Using Approval Balloting.- On Some Distance Aspects in Social Choice Theory.- Algorithms for Biproportional Apportionment.- Distance from Consensus: A Theme and Variations.- A Strategic Problem in Approval Voting.- The Italian Bug: A Flawed Procedure for Bi-Proportional Seat Allocation.- Current Issues of Apportionment Methods.- A Gentle Majority Clause for the Apportionment of Committee Seats.- Allotment According to Preferential Vote: Ecuador's Elections.- Degressively Proportional Methods for the Allotment of the European Parliament Seats Amongst the EU Member States.- Hidden Mathematical Structures of Voting.- A Comparison of Electoral Formulae for the Faroese Parliament.