Measuring and Controlling Divisiveness in Rank Aggregation

R. Colley, U. Grandi, C. Hidalgo, M. Macedo, C. Navarrete
IJCAI 2023
Abstract
In rank aggregation, members of a population rank issues to decide which are collectively preferred. We focus instead on identifying divisive issues that express disagreements among the preferences of individuals. We analyse the properties of our divisiveness measures and their relation to existing notions of polarisation. We also study their robustness under incomplete preferences and algorithms for control and manipulation of divisiveness. Our results advance our understanding of how to quantify disagreements in collective decision-making.

Experiments:

Election type Culture Candidates Voters Instances Parameters
Ordinal Impartial Culture [3-18] {100} 100 None
Ordinal PrefLib None None 100 None
Ordinal Urn Model [3-18] {100} 100 10\% and 50\% correlation.
Ordinal Impartial Culture [3-18] {100} 100 None
Ordinal Urn Model [3-18] {100} 100 10\% and 50\% correlation.
Ordinal Impartial Culture [2-11] {100} 100 None
Ordinal Urn Model [2-11] {100} 100 10\% and 50\% correlation.