Statistical mechanics of voting

Details Statistical mechanics of voting Statistical mechanics of voting

1998-06-29

arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9806359v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Statistical Mechanics

9 pages, plain TeX, 2 PostScript figures included with epsf.tex (ignore the under/overfull \vbox error messages)

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.1718

Decision procedures aggregating the preferences of multiple agents can produce cycles and hence outcomes which have been described heuristically as `chaotic'. We make this description precise by constructing an explicit dynamical system from the agents' preferences and a voting rule. The dynamics form a one dimensional statistical mechanics model; this suggests the use of the topological entropy to quantify the complexity of the system. We formulate natural political/social questions about the expected complexity of a voting rule and degree of cohesion/diversity among agents in terms of random matrix models---ensembles of statistical mechanics models---and compute quantitative answers in some representative cases.

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