Nonequilibrium solutions for legislative systems

Abstract

It is well known that group decision processes (of which voting processes are an important special case) do not in general have equilibria. In fact, recent work indicates that such processes are characterized by a degree of instability much more extensive than previously recognized. As observers of ongoing political processes, we contend that such instability results simply do not describe real world politics. As an alternative, we propose a nonequilibrium model which assigns a probability distribution to the objects of political decision. Although this Markov model is based on several specific propositions about the process by which legislative bodies move from one position to another, our theoretical results do not depend on these specific propositions: Given alternative substantive assumptions, our model would produce different predictions about outcomes. This version of the model, however, successfully simulates the results of a series of experiments performed several years ago.