voting behaviour and power in online democracy: a study of liquidfeedback in germany's pirate...
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Institute for Web Science and Technologies · University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Voting Behaviour and Power in Online Democracy
A Study of LiquidFeedback in Germany's Pirate Party
Christoph Carl Kling, Jérôme Kunegis, Heinrich Hartmann, Markus Strohmaier, Steffen Staab
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 6Christoph Carl Kling
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Online Delegative Democracy
CC-BY-SA Ilmari Karonen
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 7Christoph Carl Kling
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Delegative Democracy
Between direct and representative democracy
CC-BY-SA Ilmari Karonen
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 8Christoph Carl Kling
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Delegative Democracy
Between direct and representative democracy
Voters can delegate their vote to other voters
CC-BY-SA Ilmari Karonen
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 9Christoph Carl Kling
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CC-BY-SA Ilmari Karonen
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 10Christoph Carl Kling
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CC-BY-SA Ilmari Karonen
Delegative Democracy
Between direct and representative democracy
Voters can delegate their vote to other voters
Delegations can be revoked at any time
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 11Christoph Carl Kling
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CC-BY-SA Ilmari Karonen
Delegative Democracy
Between direct and representative democracy
Voters can delegate their vote to other voters
Delegations can be revoked at any time
Votes are public!
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 12Christoph Carl Kling
Dataset:LiquidFeedback
(German Pirate Party)
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 13Christoph Carl Kling
LiquidFeedback – German Pirate Party
Observation period: 08/2010 – 11/2013
13,836 members
14,964 delegations
499,009 votes
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 14Christoph Carl Kling
LiquidFeedback – German Pirate Party
Users create initiatives, which are grouped by issues and belong to areas
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 15Christoph Carl Kling
LiquidFeedback – German Pirate Party
Users create initiatives, which are grouped by issues and belong to areas
Area: Environmental issuesIssue: CO2 output has to be reduced.Initiative: Subsidise wind turbines!
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 16Christoph Carl Kling
LiquidFeedback – German Pirate Party
Users create initiatives, which are grouped by issues and belong to areas
Area: Environmental issuesIssue: CO2 output has to be reduced.Initiative: Subsidise wind turbines!
Areas: 22Issues: 3,565Initiatives: 6,517
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 17Christoph Carl Kling
LiquidFeedback – German Pirate Party
Users create initiatives, which are grouped by issues and belong to areas
Delegations on global, initiative, issue and area level
→ “Back-delegations” possible
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 18Christoph Carl Kling
Dataset – First Impressions
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 19Christoph Carl Kling
Dataset – First Impressions
Voting Weight
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 20Christoph Carl Kling
Dataset – First Impressions
3,658 members > 10 votes1,156 members > 100 votes 54 members > 1,000 votesMedian all: 8 votes
Median delegating: 42 votesMedian delegates: 64 votes
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 21Christoph Carl Kling
Delegation Network
Temporal analysis
0
1000
2000
Activ
ity
4
6
8
Dlg
. per
use
r
0.1
0.15
Rec
ipr.
0.640.660.68
Gin
i
0.05
0.1
0.15
Clu
ster
ing
2011 2012 20130
100020003000
LCC
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 22Christoph Carl Kling
Delegation Network
Temporal analysis
0
1000
2000
Activ
ity
4
6
8
Dlg
. per
use
r
0.1
0.15
Rec
ipr.
0.640.660.68
Gin
i
0.05
0.1
0.15
Clu
ster
ing
2011 2012 20130
100020003000
LCC
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 23Christoph Carl Kling
Delegation Network
Temporal analysis
0
1000
2000
Activ
ity
4
6
8
Dlg
. per
use
r
0.1
0.15
Rec
ipr.
0.640.660.68
Gin
i
0.05
0.1
0.15
Clu
ster
ing
2011 2012 20130
100020003000
LCC
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 24Christoph Carl Kling
Delegation Network
Temporal analysis
0
1000
2000
Activ
ity
4
6
8
Dlg
. per
use
r
0.1
0.15
Rec
ipr.
0.640.660.68
Gin
i
0.05
0.1
0.15
Clu
ster
ing
2011 2012 20130
100020003000
LCC
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 25Christoph Carl Kling
Delegation Network
Temporal analysis
0
1000
2000
Activ
ity
4
6
8
Dlg
. per
use
r
0.1
0.15
Rec
ipr.
0.640.660.68
Gin
i
0.05
0.1
0.15
Clu
ster
ing
2011 2012 20130
100020003000
LCC
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 26Christoph Carl Kling
Delegation Network
Temporal analysis
0
1000
2000
Activ
ity
4
6
8
Dlg
. per
use
r
0.1
0.15
Rec
ipr.
0.640.660.68
Gin
i
0.05
0.1
0.15
Clu
ster
ing
2011 2012 20130
100020003000
LCC
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 27Christoph Carl Kling
Delegation Network
Temporal analysis
0
1000
2000
Activ
ity
4
6
8
Dlg
. per
use
r
0.1
0.15
Rec
ipr.
0.640.660.68
Gin
i
0.05
0.1
0.15
Clu
ster
ing
2011 2012 20130
100020003000
LCC
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 29Christoph Carl Kling
Power
Ability to influence the outcome of a vote
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 30Christoph Carl Kling
Power
Ability to influence the outcome of a vote
5
4
1
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 31Christoph Carl Kling
Power
Ability to influence the outcome of a vote
5
4 same power
1
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 32Christoph Carl Kling
Power Indices
Given voting weights of all voters in a vote:Predict the probability that a given user will be able determine the outcome of a vote
Banzhaf power index: Votes are independent
Shapley power index:Votes are homogeneous
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 33Christoph Carl Kling
Power
Banzhaf power index: Votes are independent
Shapley power index:Votes are homogeneous
Potential Power:Measured power in the dataset
Exercised Power:Power used to actually turn votes
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 34Christoph Carl Kling
Power Indices
20 40 60 80 1000
0.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9
1
Delegations d
Pow
er
p
Potential PowerExercised Power
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 36Christoph Carl Kling
Average Approval Rate
(How many users agree with x% of all voted proposals?)
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 37Christoph Carl Kling
Average Approval Rate
Powerful voters tend to vote positive and to agree with the majority
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 38Christoph Carl Kling
Power
Potential Power:Measured power in the dataset
Beta power index: Beta distributed approval rate for Banzhaf index
Regression power index:Logistic regression for predicting the approval rate – given the voting weight – of the Banzhaf index
Beta2 power index:Beta distributed approval rate for Shapley index
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 40Christoph Carl Kling
Novel Power Indices
(Perplexity ~ normalised log likelihood)
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 41Christoph Carl Kling
The Impact of Delegations
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 42Christoph Carl Kling
Approval Rate
→ Approval rate decreases with voting experience
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 43Christoph Carl Kling
Approval Rate
→ Delegates stabilise the approval rate!
The Power of Super-Voters in Online Delegative Democracy 44Christoph Carl Kling
Results
● Including voting bias in power indices improves the prediction
First evaluation of power indices on a large voting history
Delegates stabilise the system