Adventures in Democratic Decision Making
Though often taken for granted, democratic institutions have been subject to change and tinkering since their early days. The aim of the course is to look under the bonnet of voting systems, juries and apportionment rules, and see how the rules of the game have been questioned and refined over time. We will focus on a series of notable moments in democratic decision making, starting in Ancient Greece and ending with present day efforts to find a perfectly proportional representation system. The course will mainly follow George Szpiro’s Numbers Rule. The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present, and structured as a series of weekly discussions on each chapter in the book. There will also be additional material on recent developments and trends.
Lectures
Week 1 (October 14, 2024)
We start out by introducing ourselves, followed by a breakdown of the logistics of the course.
We then have our first glimpse of social choice theory, and two ways of thinking about voting: as a procedure for finding society’s opinion about an unknown ground truth (epistemic voting), versus as a procedure for aggregating preferences into an expression of what voters want (non-epistemic voting).
Slides are online here.
Week 2 (October 21, 2024)
We look at an early example of a functioning democracy: Ancient Athens. We see how Athenian democracy worked, and hear from one of its main critics, local thinker and would-be advisor to kings called Plato.
The readings are Chapter 3 of Lane (2014), for an overview of democratic Athens, and Chapter 1 from Szpiro (2010) for Plato’s alternative. As a bonus reading, also have a look at Chapter 4 of Melissa Lane’s book.
Bibliography
- Szpiro, G. (2010). Numbers Rule. The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present. Princeton University Press.
- Lane, M. (2015). The Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They Matter. Princeton University Press.