Preliminary thoughts on proxy delegation

In organizations with dispersed voting rights such as DAOs and corporations, active voting by members (e.g., token holders or shareholders) is low. One possible solution is the introduction of indirect voting by delegates. In this talk, Pablo Montagnes (Emory) presents a few models of delegations, emphasizing that some delegation proposals implicitly require centralized bodies. He then introduces a calculus of delegation and contrasts it with the calculus of voting. Unlike standard models of voting, vote holders might prefer to delegate to more “ideologically” distant delegates even with only two choices. He then introduces portfolios of delegates and shows that voters might prefer to delegate to a team of agents that make collective decisions.

About the speaker

Pablo is an associate professor in the departments of Quantitative Theory and Methods and Political Science at Emory University. His research focuses on Political Economy and Organization including voting in legislatures and elections. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Economic Review, the American Political Science Review, and PNAS.

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