The Fluid Mechanics of Liquid Democracy

Liquid democracy is the principle of making collective decisions by letting agents transitively delegate their votes. Despite its significant appeal, it has become apparent that a weakness of liquid democracy is that a small subset of agents may gain massive influence. To address this, we propose to change the current practice by allowing agents to specify multiple delegation options instead of just one. Much like in nature, where—fluid mechanics teaches us—liquid maintains an equal level in connected vessels, we seek to control the flow of votes in a way that balances influence as much as possible. Specifically, we analyze the problem of choosing delegations to approximately minimize the maximum number of votes entrusted to any agent by drawing connections to the literature on confluent flow. We also introduce a random graph model for liquid democracy and use it to demonstrate the benefits of our approach both theoretically and empirically.

Identification of Adaptive Capacity Assessments to Improve Collective Adaptation of Farmers to Climate Change

Collective adaptation is a relevant discussion in association with the limited adaptive capacity of farmers to deal with climate change. This study aims to improve the collective adaptation of farmers through the identification of adaptive capacity assessments. A collective adaptation mechanism in the form of planning for rice planting time has succeeded in reducing the vulnerability of farmers. This study was conducted at a rice production center with a collective adaptation mechanism in Indramayu District, West Java Province, Indonesia. The data were collected using a quantitative method through a questionnaire distributed to 296 farmer respondents and a qualitative method through structured interviews. The observations provided an overview for authors to build structured interviews. The results of the study show that the adaptive capacity of farmers is supported by social capital and collective adaptation mechanisms of farmers consisting of trust in the formal leaders, quality of collective decisions, and planning capacity. The results of this study contribute to the implementation of public policies in order to support the successful implementation of adaptation strategies to deal with climate change in accordance with the needs of farmers.

CROSS CULTURAL COMMUNICATION TO ACCOMODATE GENERATION GAP IN DISRUPTIVE ERA

This research described about how Cross-Cultural Communication contributes its influence on accommodating the generation gap to improve a social structure in Indonesia, especially on Disruptive Era. In accommodating the generation gap, the cross-cultural communication focus on the patterns of convergence and divergence of communication behaviors, particularly as they relate to the goals of the people for social approval, communication efficiency, and identity. This research was done in Bina Nusantara (BINUS) University, and used a descriptive qualitative method with constructivism paradigm, and coding to analyze the data. The results showed that accommodation in cross-cultural communication can improved the ability on problem-solving skills, collective decisions and can resolved the problem that arise from generation gap to make it become harmonious interactions. The lack of the role in providing information from generation to another generation usually based on the assumption that the other generation already knew the condition, situation and also the meaning behind it as well without any discussion and deeper communication further. Due to the changes in social structure, BINUS creating a cross cultural communication model to accommodate the generation gap in social structure: openness, and engagement, through (for example) creative furniture arrangemement in some classes. The result also shown that engagement between the students and the lecturer will be more powerful in creating values to have a better social condition. The people who willing to build the communication instead of assumed will be more successful in all aspects of cross-cultural communication.

Blockchain oriented hyperledger based performance driven framework for mass e-voting

Voting is a process for making collective decisions or to express a mass opinion on list of options available. It is a most commonly used instrument to elect a political representative. It is apparent that the methodology currently followed for voting in India can be improved at many levels to make it more robust and efficient. Currently, the voting methodology followed in Indian political elections has two major issues, one is high cost per voter, and low voter turnout. There are many attempts by other democratic setups to tackle this problem by offering online method of voting, but the most trustworthy and promising solution is considered to be voting platform/infrastructure backed by Blockchain. Most of the currently existing Blockchain based voting solutions are computationally expensive, doesn’t provide a verifiable secret ballot, slow, and Byzantine Fault Tolerant Proof of Work algorithms run on a public Blockchain network. The work presented in this paper aims at addressing these issues by proposing Blockchain based framework that leverages Hyperledger Fabric for Scalable Voting System. The proposed method uses Aadhar number for authentication of voters. The proposed method can efficiently cater the secure, trustworthy, and promising to Indian scale. The proposed method offers a various solution, offline and online voting with features such as cost-effective deployments, instantaneous vote counting, Cast as Intended Verifiability, and an observable and auditable architecture. The proposed method has been tested on real time setup and the experimental results are promising.

Democracy

Democracy is a term that is used to denote a variety of distinct objects and ideas. Democracy describes either a set of political institutions or an ideal of collective self-rule. Democracy can also be short for a normative principle of either legitimacy or justice. Finally, democracy might be used to denote an egalitarian attitude. These four uses of the term should be kept distinct and raises separate conceptual and normative issues. The value of democracy, whether democratic political institutions or democratic self-rule, is either instrumental, non-instrumental, or both. The non-instrumental value of democracy derives either from the alleged fairness of majority rule or from the value of the social relationships enabled by participation in democratic procedures. The instrumental value of democracy lends support from a growing body of empirical research. Yet, the claim that democracy has a positive causal effect on public goods is inconclusive with respect to the moral justification of democratic institutions. Normative reasons for democracy’s instrumental value must instead appeal to the fact that it contributes to equality, liberty, truth, or the realization of popular will. Democracy as a principle of either political legitimacy or justice is a normative view that evades concerns with the definition and value of democracy. Normative democracy is a claim about the conditions either for legitimacy or justice of either public authority or coercion. Debates in normative democracy are largely divorced from the conceptual and empirical concerns that inform studies of democracy elsewhere. The boundaries of the people entitled to participate in collective decisions is a question that applies to all four uses of democracy. The boundary question raises three distinct issues. The first is the extent of inclusion required among the members of the unit. The second is if membership in the unit is necessary for inclusion or if people that are not recognized as members are on certain conditions also entitled to participate. The third and final issue concerns the boundaries of the unit itself.

The Question of Membership

This chapter discusses the importance of understanding how regional communities such as the European Union decide which states are eligible to join. It surveys insights and gaps in existing scholarship. It then introduces the argument that membership norms—the community’s prevailing definition of which type of state is eligible for membership—shape collective decisions by empowering certain political positions and disempowering others. It briefly surveys competing explanations focused on treaty rules, geographic location, regime type, economic and security interests, and then outlines the empirical methods used to test these various arguments. Finally, it surveys the aims and content of the chapters that follow.

From individuals to emotional drones: Technology-driven change in the collective conditioning of intimacy

Spatial media has received impetus in recent studies, arguing that its function as a mediator of meaning and enabler of intimacy are critical in late modernity. We suggest that spatial media not only liquefies key institutions of modernity but also replaces them. We conducted interviews with men who use spatial media to realize intimacy. In our analysis, we reference the fictional Star Trek universe to illustrate how spatial media may function as an institution. In the figure of the Borg, human-tech borders are eliminated, control is exerted through collective decisions, and bodies are assimilated into an expanding beehive-like community. Similarly, spatial media enables the liquefaction of human-tech borders, the creation of new sets of rules and hierarchies, and the assimilation of intimacy practices. We thereby conclude that digital media not only drive a process of liquefaction but also the forging of new institutional structures that condition the realization of intimacy.

EMBEDDED REMOTE GROUP ENVIRONMENT THROUGH MODIFICATION IN MACBETH – AN APPLICATION OF CONTRACTOR’S SELECTION IN CONSTRUCTION

A group decision environment has profound roots in MACBETH (Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique) analysis which indeed has plentiful advantages; however, many researchers envisage the embedded group decision system as an impediment in actual implementation. The accessibility of explicit interaction of decision makers at a single platform in the form of embedded group decision environment is a great impediment to the researchers. Accordingly, this research aims to tailor a novel alternative system of dealing with the embedded group decision under a remote group decision environment via integrating MACBETH and Exploratory Factor Analysis. The study finds that an embedded remote group decision making system could serve as an alternative system of group decision making which has plentiful perks in group decision applications. This system could help researchers to carry out research without confusing in embedded group decision environment but including all decision-makers in the model. The implication of proposed system is not only limited to MACBETH; however, due to system’s versatility, a similar approach could be fruitful for other group-related environments involving collective decisions.

The problem of no hands: responsibility voids in collective decisions

The problem of no hands concerns the existence of so-called responsibility voids: cases where a group makes a certain decision, yet no individual member of the group can be held responsible for this decision. Criteria-based collective decision procedures play a central role in philosophical debates on responsibility voids. In particular, the well-known discursive dilemma has been used to argue for the existence of these voids. But there is no consensus: others argue that no such voids exist in the discursive dilemma under the assumption that casting an untruthful opinion is eligible. We argue that, under this assumption, the procedure used in the discursive dilemma is indeed immune to responsibility voids, yet such voids can still arise for other criteria-based procedures. We provide two general characterizations of the conditions under which criteria-based collective decision procedures are immune to these voids. Our general characterizations are used to prove that responsibility voids are ruled out by criteria-based procedures involving an atomistic or monotonic decision function. In addition, we show that our results imply various other insights concerning the logic of responsibility voids.