Science

Mathematics of Direct Democracy

• Ingenious
• Relevant
• Inspirational

The social movements that have sprung up across the United States this fall, starting with the occupation of Wall Street, are clearly about occupying public space and articulating the concerns of "the 99%". But they're also fundamentally about making a new kind of democracy possible. From Spain's Real Democracy movement, and Greece's dimokratia movement, to this fall's general assemblies on Wall Street, in Oakland, and around the world, thousands of people are using consensus-based democratic process to make decisions and solve day-to-day problems together in a way that ensures that everyone's voice counts.

As one organizer of the Wall Street demonstrations documents, the Wall Street occupation is directly inspired by the Spanish and Greek movements' emphasis on democratic practice. Commentator Douglas Rushkoff makes the same point: the purpose of the occupations is to work on new, better ways to live together, and democratic consensus process - the process in use in the Occupy movement, as in many movements before it - may be its "killer app".

In the optimistic, exploratory spirit of this moment of possibility, I am working to develop quantitative models and simulations of consensus decision-making process. The purpose of this project is not to explain, capture, or predict the endless surprises and delights of human creativity and communication - that would be a fool's errand, and an insult to humans. Rather, it is to try to capture particular aspects of the process that seem important, and see what there is to learn from looking at them under the microscope of a self-contained model. Ideally, this exploration will lead to testable ideas about how to work together to make decisions in real life. As an aside, the models I am using are about people working together to find a solution to a shared problem, and so they are relevant to any number of situations, including workspaces and the scientific process.

The early phase of the project has already produced some sensible predictions, though they are somewhat obvious - for instance, it's harder to come to agreement in a larger group, because it's more likely there will be someone who disagrees; and it's easier to come to agreement when people have more in common. These results are like turning on the machine and making sure it runs - yes, it seems to be talking about the same process we are. Now it's time to fire it up and see what it can do! What can you do when there are really a lot of people, and just talking an idea over can take hours? When is it best to break into small groups and then rejoin? If there are really different opinions in the group, should similar people be in small groups together or should each group have the widest range possible? Should people speak in a particular order? What are the best strategies for finding a proposal that wins full approval? For doing it quickly?

This funding, if raised, will allow me to work on this problem full time for at least a month, including all research expenses. My current funding includes multiple other projects, and this will allow me to put them aside for a time and focus on this project.

I am publishing all my work on this project on my publicly visible research wiki as it happens, including all data, software, and statistical analysis. I will continue to maintain this standard, so that all results will be immediately shared with the world.  I welcome collaboration as well as contributions.

Here is a more detailed research proposal, for those who are interested.