Social Choice Theory

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Social choice theory asks how to turn individual rankings, approvals, or valuations into collective choices, and how to divide resources fairly. It studies voting rules and preference aggregation through axioms, strategic models, and computational methods, including algorithms for structured elections and fair division. Researchers also measure properties such as proportional representation, welfare, and distortion, and apply these ideas to settings such as school choice, citizens’ assemblies, and AI preference evaluation. A central tension is that fairness, efficiency, resistance to manipulation, and computational tractability can conflict, so guarantees often depend on the preference model and decision setting.

Latest papers

53 papers8 papers in the last four weeks, up 33% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

Tree Plurality Veto: Voting in Few Rounds with Efficient Communication and Low Metric Distortion
Oct 17, 2026Gabriel Chen, Yu Cheng, Alice WangSocial Choice Theory Communication Complexity
Brown University.
Collective intelligence through aggregation
Oct 5, 2026Franz Dietrich, Christian ListSocial Choice Theory
We thank two anonymous referees and an editor for very helpful comments.
Groupwise Distortion Guarantees for Preference-Based Alignment
Oct 4, 2026Jacob Brodkey, Roberto Tamez, Aaron RothPairwise Preference Learning Social Choice Theory
University of Pennsylvania
Settling the Computational Complexity of Max-Min Allocation with Ternary Valuations
Oct 4, 2026Thi Ngoc Anh Vu, Trung Thanh Nguyen, Khaled Elbassioni +1Submodular Optimization Social Choice Theory
Faculty of Computer Science, Phenikaa University, Hanoi 12116, Vietnam · DataOptLab, National Economics University, Hanoi 11616, Vietnam · Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, UAE +1
Outer Diversity of Condorcet Domains
Sep 30, 2026Piotr Faliszewski, Jan Jabrocki, Mateusz Słuszniak +3Social Choice Theory Majority Voting
AGH University, Poland · University of Geneva, Switzerland · University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Query-efficient winner prediction in district-based elections
Sep 30, 2026Koustav De, Debajyoti Kar, Swagato SanyalQuery Complexity Social Choice Theory
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India · Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru, India · School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Reverse Sequential Proportional Approval Voting Rule: Proportionality and Approximation Guarantees
Sep 28, 2026Georgios PapasotiropoulosSocial Choice Theory Approximation Algorithms
University of Warsaw
The Double-Edged Sword of Information: Revealed versus Hidden Lotteries in School Choice
Sep 28, 2026Parinaz Naghizadeh, Jingyan WangSocial Choice Theory Information Design
University of California, San Diego · Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
Nearly Group-Separable Elections
Sep 27, 2026Piotr Faliszewski, Jan Jabrocki, Stanisław Kaźmierowski +3Social Choice Theory Parameterized Complexity
AGH University of Krakow, Poland · University of Warsaw, Poland · Charles University, Czechia +3
Axiom Satisfiability of Linear Rewards in Alignment
Sep 26, 2026Soumya Nasipuri, Sayak Ray Chowdhury, Sanjukta RoyReward Modeling Preference Alignment
Indian Statistical Institute, India · Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
Proportional Representation in Temporal Voting with Ranked Preferences
Sep 24, 2026Noam Hazon, Leora Schmerler, Nicholas TehSocial Choice Theory
Department of Data Science and AI, Ariel University · Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford
Costly Voting in the Hotelling-Downs Model
Sep 24, 2026Guy Wolf, Reshef MeirSocial Choice Theory Game Theory
Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
Anchored Sequential Deliberation
Sep 15, 2026Sijing Tu, Ashish GoelSocial Choice Theory
Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University
A latent dimension of Condorcet's jury theorem for multiple AI advisers
Sep 13, 2026Kazutoshi Sasahara, Aoi Naito, Ryo FujieSocial Choice Theory Multi-Agent Consensus
Institute of Science Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan · Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Improving Randomized Metric Distortion to 2.1441
Aug 29, 2026Nisarg ShahSocial Choice Theory Approximation Algorithms
University of Toronto
Simultaneous Envy and Equitability Guarantees
Aug 26, 2026Hadi Hosseini, Shraddha Pathak, Lirong Xia +1Social Choice Theory Fair Resource Allocation
Penn State University · Rutgers University
Algorithmic Impact Reveals the Hidden Social Choice Structure of Alignment
Aug 25, 2026Zachary Wojtowicz, Michelle Si, Finale Doshi-Velez +1Social Welfare Maximization AI Alignment
MIT Cambridge, MA 02139 · Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138
Characterizing Necessary Losers to Explain Tournaments Solutions
Aug 24, 2026Contet Clément, Umberto Grandi, Jérôme MenginExplainable Artificial Intelligence Social Choice Theory
Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT) · Université de Toulouse · Université Toulouse Capitole
Multi-Winner Voting with Argumentative Ballots
Aug 24, 2026Ryuta Arisaka, Hirotaka OnoSocial Choice Theory
Department of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan · Department of Mathematical Informatics, Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan
Metric Distortion of Social Welfare Functions
Aug 22, 2026Fatih Erdem Kizilkaya, Aaryaman Aggarwal, Evi MichaSocial Choice Theory Rank Aggregation
University of Southern California · Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Preference Reasoning under Indeterminacy in Large Language Models
Aug 19, 2026Hadi Hosseini, Samarth Khanna, Xiyuan WangLLM Reliability Social Choice Theory
Penn State University, USA
Strengthening Full Justified Representation: Efficient Verification and Computation
Aug 11, 2026Nicholas TehSocial Choice Theory
University of Oxford, UK
Voting Method Synthesis on an Infinite Domain: A Possibility Theorem for Positive Involvement
Aug 9, 2026Wesley H. HollidaySocial Choice Theory
University of California, Berkeley
Algorithms for Structured Elections under Thiele Voting Rules
Jul 30, 2026Alexandra Lassota, Krzysztof SornatSocial Choice Theory
TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands · AGH University, Poland
Fair Division with Strictly Increasing Valuations: A Tight Threshold for Two-Agent EF1 and PO
Jul 25, 2026Nicholas TehSocial Choice Theory Fair Resource Allocation
University of Oxford, UK
Can LLMs Rank? A Tale of Triads and Triage
Jun 29, 2026Gaurab Pokharel, Shafkat Farabi, Patrick J. Fowler +1Pairwise Comparison Social Choice Theory
Virginia Tech Alexandria, VA · Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO
Measurable Majorities Are Not Finitely Axiomatizable
Jun 24, 2026Lawrence S. Moss, Arthur Paul PedersenSocial Choice Theory Social Reasoning
(†) Dept. of Mathematics, Indiana University, Bloomington. · (‡) Dept. of Computer Science & the Intel Investigations Lab, the City College of New York; the Graduate Center & Remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute, the City University of New York.
The Measurable Majority
Jun 22, 2026Lawrence S. Moss, Arthur Paul PedersenSocial Choice Theory Majority Voting
(†) Dept. of Mathematics, Indiana University, Bloomington. · (‡) Dept. of Computer Science & the Intel Investigations Lab, the City College of New York · the Graduate Center & Remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute, the City University of New York.
Democracy on Rugged Landscapes: Phase Transitions in Optimal Voting Rules
Jun 1, 2026Joshua NunleySocial Choice Theory Phase Transitions
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
Large Language Models Should Learn Personalized Rather Than Aggregated Human Preferences
May 30, 2026Cristina GarbaceaLLM Alignment Social Choice Theory
University of Chicago, Data Science Institute, Chicago, USA.

Oct 17, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

Tree Plurality Veto: Voting in Few Rounds with Efficient Communication and Low Metric Distortion

Gabriel Chen, Yu Cheng, Alice Wang

Brown University.

Social Choice Theory Communication Complexity

Open paper AskPDF arXiv

We consider the metric distortion framework for voting, where

n

voters and

m

candidates are embedded in an unknown metric space. A voting rule selects a candidate using only voters' ordinal preferences, and its distortion is the worst-case ratio between the social cost of the selected candidate and the minimum social cost. We study how round complexity trades off against total communication in deterministic voting protocols with low distortion. Deterministic rules can achieve the optimal distortion of

3

in one round by eliciting complete rankings using

Θ(nm\log m)

bits, while a direct sequential implementation of PluralityVeto achieves the same distortion using only

O(n\log m)

bits but requires

Θ(n)

rounds. Our main result is TreePluralityVeto, a deterministic voting protocol that, for every

r\ge 2

, achieves distortion at most

2r-1

using at most

r

rounds and

O(n\log m+n s^{1/(r-1)}\log s)

bits of total communication, where

s = \min\{n, m\}

. The protocol runs PluralityVeto on a hierarchical partition of the voters, collecting restricted rankings in parallel at each level. The branching factor controls the tradeoff between rounds and communication, and a matching-based analysis shows that each level increases the distortion bound by at most

2