A Social Network for Societal-Scale Decision-Making Systems

Abstract

In societal-scale decision-making systems the collective is faced with the problem of ensuring that the derived group decision is in accord with the collective's intention. In modern systems, political institutions have instatiated representative forms of decision-making to ensure that every individual in the society has a participatory voice in the decision-making behavior of the whole--even if only indirectly through representation. An agent-based simulation demonstrates that in modern representative systems, as the ratio of representatives increases, there exists an exponential decrease in the ability for the group to behave in accord with the desires of the whole. To remedy this issue, this paper provides a novel representative power structure for decision-making that utilizes a social network and power distribution algorithm to maintain the collective's perspective over varying degrees of participation and/or ratios of representation. This work shows promise for the future development of policy-making systems that are supported by the computer and network infrastructure of our society.