The research paper “Delegations as Adaptive Representation Patterns: Rethinking Influence in Liquid Democracy” was co-authored by Davide Grossi and Andreas Nitsche as part of the PERYCLES project. Nitsche presented the paper at this year’s European Network for Digital Democracy conference, held on June 12 at the Centre d’Économie de la Sorbonne in Paris. He opened with a thought-provoking challenge:

“What if everything you fear about liquid democracy is caused by looking at it the wrong way?
Most models treat delegation as a static graph—but in reality, it’s a process. And when we study real-world liquid democracy, we find that transitive influence doesn’t spiral—it shrinks, fast. Exponentially.
That means the guru problem? Mostly fiction. Cycles? Beneficial at most. And many ‘fixes’? Counterproductive. Liquid democracy is a system that learns, adapts, and self-regulates.”(Andreas Nitsche at the Centre d’Économie de la Sorbonne in Paris, France)