Decentralized Organizations and Digital Governance
Name of applicant
Mohsen Pourpounehnajafabadi
Amount
DKK 700,000
Year
2021
Type of grant
Visiting Fellowships at University of Oxford
What?
The advances in digital technology had a fundamental impact on governing organizations. The way the decisions are made through an organization is rapidly changing with the use of digital platforms. The Internet has made information more accessible and freely available, and people can now have a say in ways easier than before. New digital platforms are providing new infrastructures for public decision-making and engagement of the members, and yet, whilst increasingly familiar, many questions remain about how these new resources should be mobilized and how digital platforms can provide democratic solutions. Thus, in my project I will analyze the governance models in digital platforms, and propose new designs that are suited to the needs of such platforms.
Why?
Throughout history, many methods are suggested to ensure "correctly" endogenizing the voters' preferences on the proposals. These models mainly have certain features, such as single vote per individual, anonymous votes, and being impossible to change a vote after being cast. However, digital platforms have unique features which require designing new governance models, in particular, due to the Lack of true identity, and Non-hierarchical structure. Therefore, designing new models to reflect the wills of every individual is of great importance to ensure the success of digital organization.
How?
To pursue this goal, I will first develop a mathematical framework to model the intensity of preferences, the age/decay function of a vote, the aggregation method of this information into a unique outcome/ordering. This will provide a conceptual framework to consider the strategic and the computational aspects of such models. Developing a flexible software platform that allows the implementation of such new voting models based on the needs and findings would be the next step in this project.