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We’re currently in the process of reviewing and updating this profile. For a more up-to-date overview of this area, we recommend starting with this article on voting reform from 80,000 Hours.
This profile is tailored towards students studying economics, sociology and political science, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
In a democratic system, the voting method ultimately determines who decides to run, what ideas get heard, and who writes and carries out policy. The current voting system that many countries use (first-past-the-post) seems very suboptimal from many perspectives. There seem to be a couple of other proposed voting methods that seem to generate better results. If we could reliably test and deploy better voting methods to our institutions, we might benefit from the cumulative positive effects over a large range of domains, perhaps for a very long time, including future generations.
While many current voting systems seem suboptimal from the perspective of how they affect individuals who already exist, another significant issue is the lack of systematic representation of the interests of future generations. Further research is needed to explore mechanisms for reflecting the interests of future generations in voting systems.
For more information, listen to this podcast episode or watch the talk below, in which Aaron Hamlin of the Center for Election Science discusses the benefits of approval voting. You could also watch this talk from Tyler John on the importance of representing future generations and explore the work of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations for an example of an organisation working on this.
Explore existing research
Related research papers include:
- Kamijo, Yoshio, Teruyuki Tamura, and Yoichi Hizen. (2020). ‘Effect of Proxy Voting for Children under the Voting Age on Parental Altruism Towards Future Generations.’
- Kamijo, Yoshio, Yoichi Hizen, and Tatsuyoshi Saijo. (2015). ‘Hearing the Voice of Future Generations: A Laboratory Experiment of Demeny Voting.’
- John, Tyler and William MacAskill. (2021). Longtermist Institutional Reform.
- Brams, Steven J., D. Marc Kilgour and Richard F. Potthoff. (2018). ‘Multiwinner Approval Voting: An Apportionment Approach’
- Brams, Steven J., and D. Marc Kilgour. (2014). ‘When Does Approval Voting Make the ‘Right Choices’?’
Some relevant books include:
- Poundstone, William, Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It)
- Farrell, David M., Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction
- Amy, Douglas J., Real Choices / New Voices
Find a thesis topic
If you’re interested in working on this research direction, below are some ideas on what would be valuable to explore further. If you want help refining your research ideas, apply for our coaching!
- In the paper Longtermist Institutional Reform, the authors list the following possibilities for better representing future generations as areas which require further research: ‘longer election cycles to reduce perverse election incentives, novel commitment mechanisms to enable longer-term decision-making, extra votes for parents to use on behalf of their children (or “Demeny voting”), taxation for long-run negative and positive externalities, and broader long-term pay-for-performance incentive schemes such as tying public pensions to national performance. Because the literature on political short-termism is young and still relatively conservative, there are likely to be many more promising possibilities that we have not yet uncovered.’ (Longtermist Institutional Reform)
- ‘Is there a strong case for enfranchising future generations? If so, how should this be implemented? How effectively can contemporary individuals act as representatives for future generations? Might other democratic reforms, such as age-weighting, help to better align political outcomes with long-term priorities?’ (Global Priorities Institute)
- In the paper Longtermist Institutional Reform, the authors list the following possibilities for better representing future generations as areas which require further research: ‘longer election cycles to reduce perverse election incentives, novel commitment mechanisms to enable longer-term decision-making, extra votes for parents to use on behalf of their children (or “Demeny voting”), taxation for long-run negative and positive externalities, and broader long-term pay-for-performance incentive schemes such as tying public pensions to national performance. Because the literature on political short-termism is young and still relatively conservative, there are likely to be many more promising possibilities that we have not yet uncovered.’ (Longtermist Institutional Reform)
Case studies of attempts at creating voting reforms may bring more understanding on how to go about changing voting systems.
Further resources
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Apply for our database of potential supervisors if you’re looking for formal supervision and take a look at our advice on finding a great supervisor for further ideas.
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If you’re interested in the representation of future generations, our profile on improving institutional decision-making contains relevant questions.
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If you are interested in a profile that isn’t listed under your discipline, we still encourage you to explore it if you think you could make progress in this direction. You can also explore all our recommended research directions organised by theme.
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Global health and wellbeing
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Global priorities research
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Great power coordination
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Human-aligned artificial intelligence
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Improving aquatic animal welfare
How can we help the hundreds of billions of aquatic animals that are raised and killed for human consumption every year?
Improving health and wellbeing metrics
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Improving institutional decision-making
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Improving voting methods
Learning how voting systems have been changed in the past to understand how to improve voting systems used today
Longtermism
Is improving the far future one of the key moral priorities of our time? If it is, how should this influence our actions?
Medical interventions against dangerous pathogens
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Moral circle expansion
How can we expand humanity's moral circle to create a more compassionate future?
Moral weight research
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Most important historical trends
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Non-pharmaceutical pandemic interventions
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Preventing great power conflict
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Preventing the release of dangerous pathogens
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Progress studies
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Nuclear war prevention and recovery
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Reducing physical pain
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Reducing risks from malevolent actors
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Resilient foods research
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Risks from volcanic eruptions
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Space governance
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Understanding the impact of social movements
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Wildlife fertility control research
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See here for a visual map of all our research directions
