Structured Compromise System

If one or more parties in a negotiation is unwilling to compromise, many decision making processes can grind to a halt; the current state of American politics being a prime example. What's needed is a framework that forces uncooperative sides to come to an agreement, while according each their appropriate level of influence. Rather than a series of small votes with an implied give and take linking them, all points should be considered explicitly together. Each party could propose actions to be taken, and would receive points based on their degree of representation which could spend to support or oppose each of these proposals. This process could undergo many iterations as each side determines where best to spend their influence. There would be no partial implementations, instead new, toned down versions of previous suggestions would be added to achieve this effect. For directly contradictory items only the highest scoring of them would go into effect, so the parties would have to split unrelated items up, rather than presenting them as a single action item. A limit to the number of proposals may be required, however, to prevent either side for complicating things intentionally.

By eliminating a series of small gated decisions, the ability to impede action is greatly reduced. Even if closely matched in point totals, differing priorities will make deadlock unlikely in most instances. The final point allocations would provide clear record of the weight each party places on various areas and help voters more easily see if they are being properly represented. This technique could equally be applied to compromises other than in politics and theoretically to any number of participants. Which chores each family member should do around the house, for example.

To prevent attempts to game the system by endlessly changing their point allocations, a tax on changes could be employed. In its most basic form, all changes would be penalized, but a more sophisticated one would allow all parties to alter their positions if they all agreed to do so. If only some wished to change, then the tax could be applied only to those parties. To clarify, in that case everyone would get to reallocate but those not asking for another round wouldn't be penalized. This would discourage huge changes but still allows the participants to come to an accommodation of each others priorities.

This system grew out of one I came up with to help with a software maker's survey problems. They would ask users on their website what new features they would like to see in future versions so they could gauge where to focus their development effort. Somewhat predictably, the users all voted for all the good features, providing little useful direction. I suggested each user get points they could allocate to various features, with the amount received varying by things such as forum participation, useful bug reporting, or number of copies of the software purchased. For reasons I've never quite understood, they weren't interested in the notion.