{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Cycles in Liquid Democracy: A Game-Theoretic Justification","authors":[{"name":"Markus Brill","slug":"markus-brill","given":"Markus","family":"Brill","affiliation":"University of Oxford"},{"name":"Rachael Colley","slug":"rachael-colley","given":"Rachael","family":"Colley","affiliation":"University of Glasgow"},{"name":"Anne-Marie George","slug":"anne-marie-george","given":"Anne-Marie","family":"George","affiliation":"University of Oslo"},{"name":"Grzegorz Lisowski","slug":"grzegorz-lisowski","given":"Grzegorz","family":"Lisowski","affiliation":"University of Groningen"},{"name":"Georgios Papasotiropoulos","slug":"georgios-papasotiropoulos","given":"Georgios","family":"Papasotiropoulos","affiliation":"University of Warsaw"},{"name":"Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin","slug":"ulrike-schmidt-kraepelin","given":"Ulrike","family":"Schmidt-Kraepelin","affiliation":"TU Eindhoven"}],"abstract":"A common criticism of liquid democracy within the relevant academic literature is that delegation cycles can occur, seemingly resulting in unused voting power. Yet, practitioners argue that delegation cycles are not only unproblematic but are even formed intentionally by participants. To bring theory closer to reality, we introduce a model that captures this strategic behavior under uncertainty. We study the existence, structure and quality of Nash equilibria, revealing that delegation cycles naturally emerge. To complement these findings, we perform computational experiments using best-response dynamics.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2026/372","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/372","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/0372.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/372.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/bibtex/372","volume":{"slug":"2026","title":"Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2026","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/","year":2026,"location":"Bremen, Germany","dates":"15-21 August 2026","editors":"Diego Calvanese","isbn":"978-1-956792-09-6","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2026"},"section":"Game Theory and Economic Paradigms","track":"Main Track","number":372,"pages":{"first":3350,"last":3358},"keywords":["Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Noncooperative games","Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Computational social choice"],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"[Abramowitz and Mattei, 2025] Ben Abramowitz and Nicholas Mattei. 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