Representative Committees of Peers

A population of voters must elect representatives among themselves to decide on a sequence of possibly unforeseen binary issues. Voters care only about the final decision, not the elected representatives. The disutility of a voter is proportional to the fraction of issues, where his preferences disagree with the decision. While an issue-by-issue vote by all voters would maximize social welfare, we are interested in how well the preferences of the population can be approximated by a small committee. We show that a k-sortition (a random committee of k voters with the majority vote within the committee) leads to an outcome within the factor 1+O(1/√ k) of the optimal social cost for any number of voters n, any number of issues m, and any preference profile. For a small number of issues m, the social cost can be made even closer to optimal by delegation procedures that weigh committee members according to their number of followers. However, for large m, we demonstrate that the k-sortition is the worst-case optimal rule within a broad family of committee-based rules that take into account metric information about the preference profile of the whole population.

Voting in Three-Alternative Committees: An Experiment

We design an experiment to test how voters vote in a small committee election with three alternatives. Voters have common preferences that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal prior to the election and then casts a vote. The alternative with the most votes wins. We fix the number of voters in our experiment to be five and focus on differences in the information structure (prior and signal distributions). We test three different treatments (different prior and signal distributions) that pose different challenges for the voters. In one, simply voting for one’s signal is an equilibrium. In the other two, it is not. Despite the different levels of complexity for the voters, they come relatively close to the predicted strategies (that sometimes involve mixing). As a consequence, the efficiency of the decision is also relatively high and comes close to predicted levels. In one variation of the experiment, we calculate posterior beliefs for the subjects and post them. In another, we do not. Interestingly, the important findings do not change.

Which Candidate Selection Method is the Most Democratic?

This article suggests guidelines for identifying the ramifications of central elements of candidate selection methods for various democratic dimensions – participation, competition, representation and responsiveness – and analyses their possible role in supplying checks and balances. It proposes employing a three-stage candidate selection method: in the first stage a small committee appoints candidates to a shortlist; in the second stage a selected party agency may add or remove candidates using a special procedure (absolute majority vote, for example) and also ratify the re-adoption of incumbent candidates; and, finally, party members select candidates for safe seats or safe list positions among the proposed candidates. The article also recommends employing moderate requirements for candidacy; the use of a non-majoritarian voting method; and allowing the national centre a say in candidate selection.

Condorcet Winners and the Paradox of Voting: Probability Calculations for Weak Preference Orders

That individual preferences may he aggregated into a meaningful collective decision using the Condorcet criterion of majority choice is one of the central tenets of democracy. But that individual preferences may not yield majority winners is one of the classic findings of the social choice literature. Given this problem, social choice theorists have attempted to estimate the probability of Condorcet winners, given certain empirical or theoretical conditions. We shall estimate the probabilities of Condorcet winners and intransitive aggregate orders for various numbers of individuals with strong or weak preference orders across various numbers of alternatives. We find, using computer simulation, a stark contrast between these estimates assuming strong individual preferences and the estimates allowing for individuals' indifference between pairs of alternatives. In contrast to earlier work, which depends on the strong-preference assumption, we suggest that the problem is most acute for small committee decision making and least acute for mass elections with few alternatives.

The early history of the aircraft gas turbine in Britain

There are two strands to the history of the aircraft gas turbine engine and jet propulsion in Britain. One strand has been told by Sir Frank Whittle (figure 1), the inventor of the turbojet engine, in Jet - the story of a pioneer (1953). 1 The other, less well known, was started by Dr Alan Arnold Griffith 2 (figure 2) of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE). In 1926, in a report entitled ‘An aerodynamic theory of turbine design’ 3 , he proposed the use of a gas turbine as an aircraft power plant. In October of that year he put his proposals to a small committee from the Air Ministry and the Aeronautical Research Committee, which expressed itself unanimously in favour of prelim inary experiments. Accordingly, two sets of experiments were started. The first was on a stationary cascade of aerofoils and was reported by R.G. Harris and R.A. Fairthorne in September 1928 (figure 3).4 The other was on a model comprising a row of turbine and compressor blades of 4 inches outside diameter, mounted on one shaft and tested by sucking air through the blading (figure 4). From measurements of the losses, the efficiencies of stages could be deduced. The results, reported by W.C. Clothier in December 19295, showed that a maximum efficiency of 90% was obtained and an efficiency of 88.3% at a pressure ratio of 1.16.

On the Possibility of Faithfully Representative Committees

By faithful representation we mean the delegation of decision making to a relatively small committee that, using a weighted voting rule, will for each pair of alternatives make sincere choices identical to those that would be made by the society as a whole, and with the same vote margins. We show that for any society, no matter how large, faithful representation is possible by a committee with no more than m(m − 1)/2 members, where m is the number of alternatives. We also show that for any society, no matter how nonideological the bulk of its electorate, social preferences can be faithfully represented by a committee whose members all have singlepeaked or single-troughed preferences. Thus, all societies can be faithfully represented by a committee whose members see the world in unidimensional terms—that is, representatives can share a coherent ideological perspective even though the electorates they represent lack such a perspective. We further show that the usual mechanisms of proportional representation and the modified form of proportional representation recently proposed by Chamberlin and Courant (1983) do not guarantee faithful representation, and we discuss mechanisms that may provide faithful representation, even in a context in which new alternatives can arise.

The Foundations of Psychiatric Nurse Training

The gradual transition from unqualified attendant to the trained psychiatric nurse of the present day was described in detail by Walk. A key turning point in this story occurred at the Quarterly Meeting of the Medico-Psychological Association in Edinburgh on 16 November 1883, when Dr A. Campbell Clark, Medical Superintendent of the Glasgow District Asylum, read a paper entitled ‘The special training of asylum attendants'. This paper was published in the Journal of Mental Science in January 1884. Whilst attention had been given by many other asylum doctors to the training of attendants, Clark's experience of organizing attendant training courses and his firm recommendations opened the way to practical steps which set training on a new footing. Clark acknowledged the work of Dr T. S. Clouston, Physician Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, who read a paper to the annual meeting of the Association in 1876 entitled ‘On the question of getting, training, and retaining the services of good asylum attendants'. This paper aroused a good deal of interest amongst members of the Association, and a small committee was formed to report ‘on the advisability of the formation of an association or registry of attendants in connection with this Association and the best manner of carrying it into effect’. However, there is no record of any report by this committee.