TY - GEN
T1 - How to amend a constitution? Model, axioms, and supermajority rules
AU - Abramowitz, Ben
AU - Shapiro, Ehud
AU - Talmon, Nimrod
N1 - Funding Information:
Ehud Shapiro is the Incumbent of The Harry Weinrebe Professorial Chair of Computer Science and Biology. We thank the generous support of the Braginsky Center for the Interface between Science and the Humanities. Nimrod Talmon was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF; Grant No. 630/19). We thank Elliot Anshelevich, Liav Orgad and our anonymous referees for their constructive feedback.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (www.ifaamas.org). All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/1/1
Y1 - 2021/1/1
N2 - A self-governed society must have decision rules by which group decisions are made, and these rules are often codified in a written constitution. One of the defining features of a constitution is its degree of entrenchment, or how hard it is to change by amendment. If it is too easy to make amendments, then the constitution can change too frequently, leading to chaos. On the other hand, if it is too hard to make amendments, then this can also be destabilizing, as voters may begin to see the rules as less legitimate, or even seek to overturn the status quo in a revolt. As norms, priorities, and circumstances change over time and over generations a constitution must be able to adapt. Our work considers a stylized model of constitutions that use reality-aware supermajority rules to make decisions.We propose principles for designing amendment procedures for changing decision rules in these constitutions and propose a novel procedure based on these principles.
AB - A self-governed society must have decision rules by which group decisions are made, and these rules are often codified in a written constitution. One of the defining features of a constitution is its degree of entrenchment, or how hard it is to change by amendment. If it is too easy to make amendments, then the constitution can change too frequently, leading to chaos. On the other hand, if it is too hard to make amendments, then this can also be destabilizing, as voters may begin to see the rules as less legitimate, or even seek to overturn the status quo in a revolt. As norms, priorities, and circumstances change over time and over generations a constitution must be able to adapt. Our work considers a stylized model of constitutions that use reality-aware supermajority rules to make decisions.We propose principles for designing amendment procedures for changing decision rules in these constitutions and propose a novel procedure based on these principles.
KW - Constitutions
KW - Online Communities
KW - Reality-Aware Social Choice
KW - Revolution
KW - Supermajority Rules
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112282777&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85112282777
T3 - Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS
SP - 1431
EP - 1433
BT - 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2021
PB - International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (IFAAMAS)
T2 - 20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2021
Y2 - 3 May 2021 through 7 May 2021
ER -