Whose opinion counts? Implementation by sortition

Rene Saran and Norovsambuu Tumennasan ()

Games and Economic Behavior, 2013, vol. 78, issue C, 72-84

Abstract: Sortition is the process of selecting decision makers or senators by a lottery. We introduce sortition in implementation theory by augmenting a mechanism with a kleroterion or lottery machine p that selects the senators. An outcome is implemented after consulting only the opinions of the senators. We call the corresponding notion of implementation as “p-implementation”, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for p-implementation. Our main result is that in “economic” environments, every Nash implementable social choice rule (SCR) is also p-implementable if p selects every quartet of players with positive probability and always selects at least three senators. We apply this result to two kleroteria: “oligarchic democracy” and “random sampling”. In economic environments, every Nash implementable SCR can be implemented by oligarchic democracy of three oligarchs. In economic environments, every Nash implementable SCR can be implemented by randomly selecting four senators.

Keywords: Nash implementation; Sortition; p-Implementation; Direct democracy; Oligarchic democracy; Random sampling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:78:y:2013:i:c:p:72-84

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2012.12.001

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