The Institute of Democratic Engagement & Accountability (IDEA) is proud to bring Bailey Flanigan, a fourth-year
PhD student at the Carnegie Mellon University Department of Computer Science, to campus on April
11th from 12-1:30pm.
This discussion will cover Bailey & her team's paper: Distortion under public-spirited voting. This work
establishes that within a social choice framework, democratic decisions are better for society when voters
are public-spirited (i.e., when deciding their political preferences, voters consider the common good in
addition to their own interests). They formally establish the societal benefit of public spirit by (1)
generalizing the standard voting model to capture voters being public-spirited to varying degrees, and then
(2) characterizing the extent to which increased public spirit among voters can lead to higher-welfare social
choice outcomes (the answer is: to a meaningful extent, and fairly robustly). This work is motivated by a
growing body of evidence that public spirit can be promoted among voters via democratic deliberation.
Beyond discussing this particular paper, the talk will also explore how CS and political science can work
together to contribute to questions about democracy.
About Ms. Flanigan:
Bailey Flanigan is a fourth-year PhD student at the Carnegie Mellon University
Department of Computer Science, advised by Ariel Procaccia. Her work uses the
tools of social choice and theoretical CS to design and analyze democratic
processes (e.g., citizens' assemblies). Outside of research, she is passionate about
equitable education and led the CS-JEDI project at CMU.
