Logic List Mailing Archive

Formal Models of Democracy, Rotterdam and/or Virtual

20-22 Apr 2022


Call for: Formal Models of Democracy @EUR, Rotterdam (April 20th ? 22nd, 
2022)

The Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics (Erasmus School of 
Philosophy, Erasmus University of Rotterdam) and the OZSW study group on 
Social Choice and Group Dynamics are organising a graduate conference on 
Formal Models of Democracy, featuring contributed talks by junior scholars 
and tutorials by Hélène Landemore 
<https://politicalscience.yale.edu/people/h-l-ne-landemore> (Yale 
University) and Ulle Endriss <https://staff.science.uva.nl/u.endriss/> 
(University of Amsterdam).

Theme of the workshop

Formal modelling (decision theory, game theory, social choice theory, 
agent-based models, formal epistemology) has been and continues to be an 
important source of insight for political philosophy in general, and 
democratic theory in particular. Scholars such as David Miller, John 
Dryzek, and Christian List have argued that democratic deliberation can 
provide an escape route from Arrovian impossibility results, so that the 
latter actually motivate, rather than undermine the former. Likewise, 
Hélène Landemore has drawn on mathematical theorems and agent-based models 
to argue against epistocracy and representative democracy, and in favour 
of a lottocratic, deliberative political system. Sean Ingham has similarly 
argued for the relevance of preference cycles for democratic theory, and 
introduced a counterfactual account of popular control (using tools from 
game theory) that can cope with such cycles.

The aim of this graduate workshop is to bring together junior scholars 
working on formal models and the normative theory of democracy. We 
specifically welcome contributions that combine both enterprises, or that 
critically inspect the relation between them. Presentations may but need 
not address one of the following questions:

   * (How) can deliberation avoid or mitigate impossibilities or 
inconsistencies revealed by social choice theory or game theory? Does it 
perhaps face other, equally challenging impossibilities?

   * What is the role of social choice theory in setting up procedures for 
deliberation or representative democracy?

   * What do mathematical results on group knowledge, opinion dynamics, or 
collective problem solving imply for the normative theory of democracy?

   * Given that deliberation is supposed to take place in small or 
mid-sized groups, what counts as a fair representation of citizens in 
deliberation?

   * How do direct democracy, representative democracy, lottocracy, and 
epistocracy (i.e., rule by experts) perform in terms of their output? What 
are suitable models or setups to check epistemic norms for democracy?

We welcome contributions by graduate students and scholars who obtained 
their PhD after March 1st, 2019. Depending on the number of high-quality 
submissions received, these junior scholars will have between 30 and 45 
minutes (including Q&A) to present their work or research project.


Practical information:

In case you would like to present at the workshop, please send an email to 
vandeputte@esphil.eur.nl<mailto:vandeputte@esphil.eur.nl> with the 
following information:

   *   Subject of the email: ?abstract FMD workshop?
   *   Title of the presentation
   *   Short (500 words) abstract
   *   5 keywords
   *   Your affiliation

Deadline: January 24th, 2022, 23h55 CET. We will send out the notification 
of acceptance by mid-February.

If the pandemic situation does not worsen significantly, the workshop will 
take place in person at Erasmus University of Rotterdam. In the other 
case, we will move it to Zoom. If the workshop takes place on campus we 
will look into the option of having hybrid sessions and/or contributions 
via video lectures for those who cannot attend on campus.


Funding & organization: This event is organized at the Erasmus Institute 
for Philosophy and Economics (Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus 
University of Rotterdam) by Frederik Van De Putte (EUR), Erica Yu (EUR), 
Måns Abrahamson (EUR), and Marina Uzunova (Free University of Amsterdam). 
It is supported by the NWO-funded 
ENCODE<https://www.eur.nl/en/esphil/encode> project (VI.Vidi.191.105). It 
is also the second workshop organized by the OZSW study group on Social 
Choice and Group Dynamics.
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