The Rule-Tool-User Nexus in Digital Collective Decisions

Zoi Terzopoulou, Marijn A. Keijzer, Gogulapati Sreedurga, Jobst Heitzig

Abstract: Collective decision making is currently experiencing a digital revolution. More and more online platforms offer to spread information, help groups make better decisions, incentivize people to exchange arguments, and force policy makers to take into account the public opinion. Social choice theory, a sub-discipline of economics, typically analyzes collective decisions, but rather overlooks the multitude of coalescent elements playing a role in them. To ensure that digital democracy is effective and scientifically grounded, we offer an original view of collective decisions as complex systems, and propose to study the systems' components in parallel with the interactions between them. We identify three eminent components: the individual agents in a group, i.e., some users of a platform, the voting rule that determines the final collective decisions, and the tools via which the users practically engage with a platform. The success of digital democracy relies on interdisciplinary and cross-methodological research. We indicate several paths in this direction.