# Hunting for Tractable Languages for Judgment Aggregation

Judgment aggregation is a general framework for collective decision making that can be used to model many different settings. Due to its general nature, the worst case complexity of essentially all relevant problems in this framework is very high. However, these intractability results are mainly due to the fact that the language to represent the aggregation domain is overly expressive. We initiate an investigation of representation languages for judgment aggregation that strike a balance between (1) being limited enough to yield computational tractability results and (2) being expressive enough to model relevant applications. In particular, we consider the languages of Krom formulas, (definite) Horn formulas, and Boolean circuits in decomposable negation normal form (DNNF). We illustrate the use of the positive complexity results that we obtain for these languages with a concrete application: voting on how to spend a budget (i.e., participatory budgeting).

## Authors

• 12 publications
• ### Towards Universal Languages for Tractable Ontology Mediated Query Answering

An ontology language for ontology mediated query answering (OMQA-languag...
11/26/2019 ∙ by Heng Zhang, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Symmetries of Quantified Boolean Formulas

While symmetries are well understood for Boolean formulas and successful...
02/12/2018 ∙ by Manuel Kauers, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Automated Reasoning with Restricted Intensional Sets

Intensional sets, i.e., sets given by a property rather than by enumerat...
10/21/2019 ∙ by Maximiliano Cristiá, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Applying Fourier Analysis to Judgment Aggregation

The classical Arrow's Theorem answers "how can n voters obtain a collect...
10/27/2018 ∙ by Yan X Zhang, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Model-Theoretic Characterizations of Boolean and Arithmetic Circuit Classes of Small Depth

In this paper we give a characterization of both Boolean and arithmetic ...
10/05/2017 ∙ by Arnaud Durand, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Iterative Local Voting for Collective Decision-making in Continuous Spaces

Many societal decision problems lie in high-dimensional continuous space...
02/26/2017 ∙ by Nikhil Garg, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Exploiting Deep Sentential Context for Expressive End-to-End Speech Synthesis

Attention-based seq2seq text-to-speech systems, especially those use sel...
08/03/2020 ∙ by Fengyu Yang, et al. ∙ 0

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## Introduction

Judgment aggregation is a general framework to study methods for collective opinion forming, that has been investigated in the area of computational social choice (see, e.g., Endriss16 Endriss16, GrossiPigozzi14 GrossiPigozzi14). The framework is set up in such a general way that it can be used to model an extremely wide range of scenarios—including, e.g., the setting of voting [Dietrich and List2007]. On the one hand, this generality is an advantage: methods studied in judgment aggregation can be employed in all these scenarios. On the other hand, however, this generality severely hinders the use of judgment aggregation methods in applications. Because there are no restrictions on the type of aggregation settings that are modeled, relevant computational tasks across the board are computationally intractable in the worst case. In other words, no performance guarantees are available that warrant the efficient use of judgment aggregation methods for applications—not even for simple settings. For example, computing the outcome of a judgment aggregation scenario is NP-hard for all aggregation procedures studied in the literature that satisfy the rudimentary quality condition of consistency [Endriss and de Haan2015, de Haan and Slavkovik2017, Lang and Slavkovik2014].

These negative computational complexity results are in many cases due purely to the expressivity of the language used to represent aggregation scenarios (full propositional logic, or CNF formulas)—not to the structure of the scenario being modeled. In other words, the known negative complexity results draw an overly negative picture

To correct this gloomy and misleading image, a more detailed and more fine-grained perspective is needed on the way that application settings are modeled in the general framework of judgment aggregation. In this paper, we take a first look at the complexity of judgment aggregation scenarios using this more sensitive point of view. That is, we initiate an investigation of representation languages for judgment aggregation that (1) are modest enough to yield positive complexity results for relevant computational tasks, yet (2) are general enough to model interesting and relevant applications.

Concretely, we look at several restricted propositional languages that strike a balance between expressivity and tractability in other settings, and we study to what extent such a balance is attained in the setting of judgment aggregation. In particular, we look at Krom (2CNF), Horn and definite Horn formulas, and we consider the class of Boolean circuits in decomposable negation normal form (DNNF). We study the impact of these restricted languages on the complexity of computing outcomes for a number of judgment aggregation procedures studied in the literature. We obtain a wide range of (positive and negative) results. Most of the results we obtain are summarized in Tables 3, 4 and 5, located in later sections.

In particular, we obtain several interesting positive complexity results for the case where the domain is represented using a Boolean circuit in DNNF. Additionally, we illustrate how this representation language of Boolean circuits in DNNF—that combines expressivity and tractability—can be used to get tractability results for a specific application: voting on how to spend a budget. This application setting can be seen as an instantiation of the setting of Participatory Budgeting (see, e.g., BenadeNathProcacciaShah17 BenadeNathProcacciaShah17).

##### Related Work

Judgment aggregation has been studied in the field of computational social choice from (a.o.) a philosophy, economics and computer science perspective (see, e.g., Dietrich07 Dietrich07, Endriss16 Endriss16, GrossiPigozzi14 GrossiPigozzi14, LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17 LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17, ListPettit02 ListPettit02, Rothe16 Rothe16). The complexity of computing outcomes for judgment aggregation procedures has been studied by, a.o., EndrissGrandiPorello12 (EndrissGrandiPorello12), EndrissGrandiDeHaanLang16 (EndrissGrandiDeHaanLang16), EndrissDeHaan15 (EndrissDeHaan15), DeHaanSlavkovik17 (DeHaanSlavkovik17) and LangSlavkovik14 (LangSlavkovik14). See Table 2 for complexity results that are relevant for this paper.

We begin by explaining the framework of judgment aggregation. We then study to what extent the known languages of Krom and (definite) Horn formulas lead to suitable results for judgment aggregation. We continue with looking at the class of DNNF circuits—studied in the field of knowledge compilation—and we illustrate how results for this class of circuits can be used for a concrete application of judgment aggregation (that of voting on how to allocate a budget). We conclude with outlining some promising ways in which the research path that we set out can be followed.

An overview of notions from propositional logic and computational complexity theory that we use can be found in the appendix. The proofs of some results are omitted from the main paper and are located in the additional material at the end—these results are marked with a star ().

## Judgment Aggregation

We begin by introducing the setting of Judgment Aggregation [Dietrich2007, Endriss2016, Grossi and Pigozzi2014, List and Pettit2002]. In this paper, we will use a variant of the framework that has been studied by, e.g., Grandi12 (Grandi12), GrandiEndriss13 (GrandiEndriss13) and EndrissGrandiDeHaanLang16 (EndrissGrandiDeHaanLang16).111This framework is also known under the name of binary aggregation with integrity constraints, and can be used interchangeably with other Judgment Aggregation frameworks from the literature —as shown by EndrissGrandiDeHaanLang16 (EndrissGrandiDeHaanLang16).

Let  be a finite set of issues, in the form of propositional variables. Intuitively, these issues are the topics about which the individuals want to combine their judgments. A truth assignment  is called a ballot, and represents an opinion that individuals and the group can have. We will also denote ballots

by a binary vector

, where  for each —we use  to denote  for each . Moreover, we say that  is a partial ballot, and that  agrees with a ballot  if  whenever , for all . We use an integrity constraint  to restrict the set of feasible opinions (for both the individuals and the group). The integrity constraint  is a propositional formula (or more generally, a single-output Boolean circuit), whose variables can include . We define the set  of rational ballots to be the ballots (for ) that are consistent with the integrity constraint . We say that finite sequences  of rational ballots are profiles. A profile contains a ballot for each individual participating in the judgment aggregation scenario. Where convenient we equate a profile  with the multiset containing .

A judgment aggregation procedure (or rule), for the set  of issues and the integrity constraint , is a function  that takes as input a profile , and that produces a non-empty set of ballots. A procedure  is called consistent if for all  and  it holds that each  is consistent with . Consistency is a central requirement for judgment aggregation procedures, and all rules that we consider in this paper are consistent.

An example of a simple judgment aggregation procedure is the majority rule

(defined for profiles with an odd number of ballots). We let the majority outcome

be the partial ballot such that for each  if a strict majority of ballots  satisfy  if a strict majority of ballots  satisfy , and  otherwise. The majority rule returns the majority outcome . The majority rule is efficient to compute, but is not consistent (as shown in Example 1).

###### Example 1.

Consider the judgment aggregation scenario. where , , and the profile  is as shown in Table 1. The majority outcome  is inconsistent with .

### Judgment Aggregation Procedures

Next, we introduce the judgment aggregation rules that we use in this paper. These procedures are all consistent and are many of the ones that have been studied in the literature (for an overview see, e.g., LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17 LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17).

Several procedures that we consider can be seen as instantiations of a general template: scoring procedures. Let  be a set of issues and  be an integrity constraint. Moreover, let  be a scoring function that assigns a value to each literal  with respect to a ballot . The scoring judgment aggregation procedure  that corresponds to  is defined as follows:

 Fs(\boldmathr)=argmaxr∈R(I,Γ)∑ri∈\boldmathr∑l∈Lit(I)r(l)=1s(ri,l).

That is,  selects the rational ballots  that maximize the cumulative score for all literals agreeing with  with respect to all ballots .

The median (or Kemeny) procedure med is based on the scoring function and is defined by letting  for each  and each . Alternatively, the med procedure can be defined as the rule that selects the ballots  that minimize the cumulative Hamming distance to the profile . The Hamming distance between two ballots  is .

The reversal scoring procedure rev is based on the scoring function  such that  for each  and each . That is, the score  of  w.r.t.  is the minimal number of issues whose truth value needs to be flipped to get a rational ballot  that sets  to false.

The max-card Condorcet (or Slater) procedure mcc is also based on the Hamming distance. Let  be a profile. The mcc procedure is defined by letting . That is, the mcc procedure selects the rational ballots that minimize the Hamming distance to the majority outcome .

The Young procedure young selects those ballots that can be obtained as a rational majority outcome by deleting a minimal number of ballots from the profile. Let  be a profile, and let  denote the smallest number such that deleting  individual ballots from  results in a profile  such that  is a complete and rational ballot. We let the outcome  of the Young procedure be the set of rational ballots  such that deleting  individual from  results in a profile  with .

The Max-Hamming procedure maxham is also based on the Hamming distance. Let  be a single ballot, and let  be a profile. We define the max-Hamming distance between  and  to be . The Max-Hamming procedure is defined by letting . That is, the Max-Hamming procedure selects the rational ballots that minimize the max-Hamming distance to .

The ranked agenda (or Tideman) procedure ra is based on the notion of majority strength.222Here, we consider a variant of the ranked agenda procedure that works with a fixed tie-breaking order. Other variants, where all possible tie-breaking orders are considered in parallel, have also been studied in the literature (see, e.g., LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17 LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17). Let  be a profile and let . The majority strength  of  for  is the number of ballots  such that . Let  be a fixed linear order on Lit (the tie-breaking order). Based on  and the majority strength, we define the linear order  on Lit. Let . Then  if either (i)  or (ii)  and . Then  where the ballot  is defined inductively as follows. Let  be such that for each  it holds that . Let  be the empty truth assignment. For each , check whether both  and  is consistent with , where  is obtained from  by setting  to true (and keeping the assignments to variables not occurring in  unchanged). If both are the case, then let . Otherwise, let . Then . Intuitively, the procedure iterates over the assignments  in the order specified by . Each literal  is set to true whenever this does not lead to an inconsistency with previously assigned literals.

### Outcome Determination

When given a judgment aggregation scenario (i.e., an agenda, an integrity constraint, and a profile of individual opinions), an important computational task is to compute a possible collective opinion, for a fixed judgment aggregation procedure. This task is often referred to as outcome determination. Moreover, often it makes sense to seek possible collective opinions that satisfy certain properties (e.g., whether or not a given issue is accepted in the collective opinion).

Essentially, this is a search problem: the task is to find one of (possibly) multiple solutions. However, to make the theoretical complexity analysis easier, we will consider the following decision variant of this problem.

Outcome(F) Instance: A set  of issues with an integrity constraint  a profile  and a partial ballot  (for ). Question: Is there a ballot  such that  agrees with ?

An outcome  witnessing a yes-answer can be obtained by solving this decision problem a linear number of times. In addition to the basic task of finding one outcome (that agrees with a given partial ballot ), one could consider other computational tasks, e.g., representing the set  of outcomes in a succinct way that admits certain queries/operations to be performed efficiently. For example, it might be desirable to enumerate all (possibly exponentially many) outcomes with polynomial delay. It could also be desirable to check whether all outcomes agree with a given partial ballot  (skeptical reasoning). For the sake of simplicity, in this paper we will stick to the decision problem described above. All tractability results that we obtain for the decision problem can straightforwardly be extended to tractability results for the above computational tasks.

For the judgment aggregation procedures  that we considered above, Outcome(F) is -hard. For an overview, see Table 2.

## Krom and (Definite) Horn Formulas

In this section, we consider the fragments of Krom (2CNF), Horn and definite Horn formulas—for a formal definition of these fragments, see the appendix. These fragments can be used to express settings where only basic dependencies between issues play a role—see Example 2 for an indication.

###### Example 2.

Krom (2CNF) formulas can be used to express dependencies of the form “if we decide to use software tool 1 () or software tool 2 (), then we need to purchase the entire package ():” .

Definite Horn formulas can be used to express dependencies of the form “if we hire both researcher 1 () and researcher 2 (), then we need to rent another office :” .

For some judgment aggregation rules these fragments make computing outcomes tractable, and for other judgment aggregation rules they do not. We begin with considering the rules med and mcc. Computing outcomes for these rules is tractable when restricted to Krom formulas, but not when restricted to (definite) Horn formulas.

###### Proposition⋆ 1.

Outcome(med) is -hard even when restricted to the case where .

###### Proposition⋆ 2.

Outcome(mcc) is -hard even when restricted to the case where .

The following result refers to the notion of majority consistency (see, e.g., LangSlavkovik14 LangSlavkovik14). A profile  is majority consistent (with respect to an integrity constraint ) if the majority outcome  is consistent with . A judgment aggregation procedure is majority consistent if for each integrity constraint  and each profile  that is majority consistent (w.r.t. ), the procedure outputs all and only those complete ballots that agree with the (partial) ballot .

###### Theorem 3.

For all judgment aggregation procedures  that are majority consistent, e.g., , Outcome(F) is polynomial-time solvable when .

###### Proof.

The general idea behind this proof is to use the property that when , the majority outcome  is always -consistent. Let  be an instance of Outcome(F) with . Let . We consider the majority outcome .

We show that the partial ballot  is consistent with . Suppose, to derive a contradiction, that  is inconsistent with . Then there must be some clause  of size  such that  and  sets both  and  to false. By definition of , then a strict majority of the ballots in  set  to false, and a strict majority of the ballots in  set  to false. By the pigeonhole principle then there must be some ballot  in  that sets both  and  to false. However, since , we get that  does not satisfy , which is a contradiction with our assumption that all ballots in the profile satisfy . Thus, we can conclude that  is consistent with .

Since  is majority consistent, we know that  contains all ballots that are consistent with both  and . Since , deciding if  contains a ballot that is consistent with  can be done in polynomial time. ∎

We continue with the maxham procedure for which computing outcomes is not tractable when restricted to Krom formulas nor when restricted to definite Horn formulas.

###### Proposition⋆ 4.

Outcome(maxham) is -hard even when restricted to the case where .

Outcome(maxham) restricted to the case where  coincides with a problem known as Closest String for binary alphabets (see, e.g., LiMaWang02 LiMaWang02). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the exact complexity of (this variant of) this problem has been identified. Outcome(maxham) is also very similar to the problem of computing outcomes for the minimax rule in approval voting [Brams, Kilgour, and Sanver2004].

###### Corollary 5.

Outcome(maxham) is -hard even when restricted to the case where .

Finally, we consider the procedure ra, for which computing outcomes is tractable for both Krom and Horn formulas.

###### Theorem 6.

Let  be a class of propositional formulas (or Boolean circuits) with the following two properties:

• is closed under instantiation, i.e., for any  and any partial truth assignment  it holds that ; and

• satisfiability of formulas in  is polynomial-time solvable.

Then Outcome(ra) is polynomial-time solvable when restricted to the case where .

###### Proof (sketch).

Let  be a class of propositional formulas that satisfies the conditions stated above, and let . We can then compute  by directly using the iterative definition of  given in the description of the ranked agenda procedure. This definition iteratively constructs partial ballots . Ballot  is the empty ballot, and for each , ballot  is constructed from  by using only the operations of instantiating the integrity constraint and checking satisfiability of the resulting formula. Due to the properties of , these operations are all polynomial-time solvable. Thus, constructing  can be done in polynomial time. ∎

###### Corollary 7.

For each , Outcome(ra) is polynomial-time solvable when restricted to the case where .

An overview of the complexity results that we established in this section can be found in Table 3.

The results that we obtained for Horn formulas can all be straightforwardly extended to the fragment of renamable Horn formulas—e.g., the fragment of renamable Horn formulas satisfies the requirements of Theorem 6. A propositional formula  is renamable Horn if there is a set  of variables such that  becomes Horn when all literals over  are complemented.

## Boolean Circuits in DNNF

Next, we consider the case where the integrity constraints are restricted to Boolean circuits in Decomposable Negation Normal Form (DNNF). This is a class of Boolean circuits studied in the area of knowledge compilation. We illustrate how this class of circuits is useful for judgment aggregation.

### Knowledge Compilation

Knowledge compilation

(see, e.g., DarwicheMarquis02 DarwicheMarquis02, Darwiche14 Darwiche14, Marquis15 Marquis15) refers to a collection of approaches for solving reasoning problems in the area of artificial intelligence and knowledge representation and reasoning that are computationally intractable in the worst-case asymptotic sense. These reasoning problems typically involve knowledge in the form of a Boolean function—often represented as a propositional formula. The general idea behind these approaches is to split the reasoning process into two phases: (1) compiling the knowledge into a different format that allows the reasoning problem to be solved efficiently, and (2) solving the reasoning problem using the compiled knowledge. Since the entire reasoning problem is computationally intractable, at least one of these two phases must be intractable. Indeed, typically the first phase does not enjoy performance guarantees on the running time—upper bounds on the size of the compiled knowledge are often desired instead. One of the advantages of this methodology is that one can reuse the compiled knowledge for many instances, which could lead to a smaller overall running time.

A prototypical example of a problem studied in the setting of knowledge compilation is that of clause entailment (see, e.g., DarwicheMarquis02 DarwicheMarquis02,  CadoliDoniniLiberatoreSchaerf02 CadoliDoniniLiberatoreSchaerf02). In this problem, one is given a knowledge base, say in the form of a propositional formula  in CNF, together with a clause . The question is to decide whether . This problem is co-NP-complete in general. The knowledge compilation approach to solve this problem would be to firstly compile the CNF formula  into an equivalent expression in a different format. For example, one could consider the formalism of Boolean circuits in Decomposable Negation Normal Form (DNNF) (or DNNF circuits, for short).

DNNF circuits are a particular class of Boolean circuits in Negation Normal Form (NNF). A Boolean circuit  in NNF is a direct acyclic graph with a single root (a node with no ingoing edges) where each leaf is labelled with  or  for a propositional variable , and where each internal node is labelled with  or . (An arc in the graph from  to  indicates that  is a child node of .) The set of propositional variables occurring in  is denoted by Var. For any truth assignment , we define the truth value  assigned to  by  in the usual way, i.e., each node is assigned a truth value based on its label and the truth value assigned to its children, and the truth value assigned to  is the truth value assigned to the root of the circuit. DNNF circuits are Boolean circuits in NNF that satisfy the additional property of decomposability. A circuit  is decomposable if for each conjunction in the circuit, the conjuncts do not share variables. That is, for each node  in  that is labelled with  and for any two children  of this node, it holds that , where  are the subcircuits of  that have  as root, respectively. An example of a DNNF circuit is given in Figure 1.

The problem of clause entailment can be solved in polynomial time when the propositional knowledge is given as a DNNF circuit [Darwiche and Marquis2002]. Moreover, every CNF formula can be translated to an equivalent DNNF circuit—without guarantees on the size of the circuit. Thus, one could solve the problem of clause entailment by first compiling the CNF formula  into an equivalent DNNF circuit  (without guarantees on the running time or size of the result) and then solving  in time polynomial in .

Next, we will show how representation languages such as DNNF circuits can be used in the setting of Judgment Aggregation, and we will argue how Judgment Aggregation can benefit from the approach of first compiling knowledge (without performance guarantees) before using the compiled knowledge to solve the initial problem.

### Algebraic Model Counting

We will use the technique of algebraic model counting [Kimmig, Van den Broeck, and De Raedt2017] to execute several judgment aggregation procedures efficiently using the structure of DNNF circuits. Algebraic model counting is a generalization of the problem of counting models of a Boolean function that uses the addition and multiplication operators of a commutative semiring.

###### Definition 1 (Commutative semiring).

A semiring is a structure , where:

• addition  is an associative and commutative binary operation over the set ;

• multiplication  is an associative binary operation over the set ;

• distributes over ;

• is the neutral element of , i.e., for all ;

• is the neutral element of , i.e., for all ; and

• is an annihilator for , i.e., for all .

When  is commutative, we say that the semiring is commutative. When  is idempotent, we say that the semiring is idempotent.

###### Definition 2 (Algebraic model counting).

Given:

• a Boolean function  over a set  of propositional variables;

• a commutative semiring , and

• a labelling function  mapping literals over the variables in  to values in the set ,

the task of algebraic model counting (AMC) is to compute:

 A(f)=⨁α:I→{0,1}f(α)=1⨂l∈Lit(I)λ(l)=1λ(l).

We can solve the task of algebraic model counting efficiently for DNNF circuits when the semiring satisfies an additional condition.

###### Definition 3 (Neutral (⊕,α)).

Let  be a semiring, and let  be a labelling function for some set  of propositional variables. A pair  is neutral if for all  it holds that .

###### Theorem 8 (KimmigVandenBroeckDeRaedt17 KimmigVandenBroeckDeRaedt17, Thm 5).

When  is represented as a DNNF circuit, and the semiring  and the labelling function  have the properties that (i)  is idempotent, and (ii)  is neutral, then the algebraic model counting problem is polynomial-time solvable—when given  and  as input, and when the operations of addition () and multiplication () over  can be performed in polynomial time.

We will use the result of Theorem 8 to show that outcome determination for several judgment aggregation procedures is tractable for the case where  is a DNNF circuit. To do so, we will consider the following commutative, idempotent semiring (also known as the max-plus algebra). We let , we let , , , and . Whenever we have a labelling function  such that  is neutral—i.e., such that  for each —we satisfy the conditions of Theorem 8.

###### Theorem 9.

Outcome(med) and Outcome(mcc) are polynomial-time computable when  is a DNNF circuit.

###### Proof.

We prove the statement for Outcome(med). The case for Outcome(mcc) is analogous. Let  be an instance of Outcome(med). We solve the problem by reducing it to the problem of algebraic model counting. For , we use the max-plus algebra described above. We construct the labelling function  as follows. For each , we count the number  of ballots  such that  and we count the number  of ballots  such that . That is, we let  and  be the majority strength of  and , respectively, in the profile . We pick a constant  such that  where  and . We then let  and . This ensures that  satisfies the condition of neutrality (i.e., that  for each ).

This choice of  and  has the property that the ballots  are exactly those complete ballots  that satisfy  and for which holds that . That is, the set  consists of those rational ballots that achieve the solution of the algebraic model counting problem . We can solve the instance of decision problem Outcome(med) by solving the algebraic model counting problem twice: once for  and once for . The instance is a yes-instance if and only if . By Theorem 8, this can be done in polynomial time.

To make this algorithm work for the case of Outcome(mcc), one only needs to adapt the values of  and . Instead of setting  and  to the majority strength of  and , respectively, we let  if a strict majority of ballots  have that , and we let  otherwise. Similarly, we let  if a strict majority of ballots  have that , and we let  otherwise. ∎

Representing the integrity constraint as a DNNF circuit makes it possible to perform more tasks efficiently than just the decision problem Outcome(F). For example, the algorithms for algebraic model counting can be used to produce a DNNF circuit that represents the set  of outcomes, allowing further operations to be carried out efficiently.

###### Theorem 10.

Outcome(rev) is polynomial-time computable when  is a DNNF circuit.

###### Proof (sketch).

The polynomial-time algorithm for Outcome(rev) is analogous to the algorithm described for Outcome(med) described in the proof of Theorem 9. The only modification that needs to be made to make this algorithm work for Outcome(rev) is to adapt the numbers  and , for each . Instead of identifying these numbers with the majority strength of  and , respectively, we identify them with the total reversal score of  and , over the profile . That is, we let  and we let . For general propositional formulas , the reversal scoring function  is NP-hard to compute. However, since  is given as a DNNF circuit, we can compute the scoring function , and thereby  and , in polynomial time—by using another reduction to the problem of algebraic model counting. We omit the details of this latter reduction. ∎

Intuitively, the results of Theorems 9 and 10 are a consequence of the fact that DNNF circuits allow polynomial-time weighted maximal model computation, and that the judgment aggregation procedures med, mcc and rev are based on weighted maximal model computation. These results can therefore also straightforwardly be extended to other judgment aggregation procedures that are based on weighted maximal model computation.

### Other Results

We can extend some previously established results (Proposition 4 and Theorem 6) to the case of DNNF circuits.

###### Corollary 11.

Outcome(ra) is polynomial-time computable when restricted to the case where  is a DNNF circuit.

###### Corollary 12.

Outcome(maxham) is -complete when restricted to the case where  is a DNNF circuit.

A similar result for young follows from a result that we will establish in the next section (Proposition 18).

###### Corollary 13.

Outcome(young) is -complete when restricted to the case where  is a DNNF circuit.

An overview of the results established so far in this section can be found in Table 4.

### A Compilation Approach

The results of Theorems 9 and 10 and Corollary 11 pave the way for another approach towards finding cases where judgment aggregation procedures can be performed efficiently. The idea behind this approach is to compile the integrity constraint into a DNNF circuit—regardless of whether this compilation process enjoys a polynomial-time worst-case performance guarantee. There are several off-the-shelf tools available that compile CNF formulas into DNNF circuits using optimized methods based on SAT solving algorithms [Darwiche2004, Muise et al.2012, Oztok and Darwiche2014b]. Since the class of DNNF circuits is expressively complete—i.e., every Boolean function can be expressed using a DNNF circuit—it is possible to compile any integrity constraint  into a DNNF circuit .

The downside is that the circuit  could be of exponential size, or it could take exponential time to compute it. However, once the circuit  is computed and stored in memory, one can use several judgment aggregation procedures efficiently: med, mcc, rev and ra.

Thus, this approach restricts the computational bottleneck to the compilation phase, before any judgments are solicited from the individuals in the judgment aggregation scenario. Once the compilation phase has been completed, there are polynomial-time guarantees on the aggregation phase (polynomial in the size of the compiled DNNF circuit ).

### CNF Formulas of Bounded Treewidth

The tractability results for DNNF circuits can be leveraged to get parameterized tractability results for the case where the integrity constraint is a CNF formula with a ‘treelike’ structure.

##### Parameterized Complexity Theory & Treewidth

In order to explain the results that follow, we briefly introduce some relevant concepts from the theory of parameterized complexity. For more details, we refer to textbooks on the topic (see, e.g., CyganEtAl15 CyganEtAl15, DowneyFellows13 DowneyFellows13). The central notion in parameterized complexity is that of fixed-parameter tractability—a notion of computational tractability that is more lenient than the traditional notion of polynomial-time solvability. In parameterized complexity running times are measured in terms of the input size  as well as a problem parameter . Intuitively, the parameter is used to capture structure that is present in the input and that can be exploited algorithmically. The smaller the value of the problem parameter , the more structure the input exhibits. Formally, we consider parameterized problems that capture the computational task at hand as well as the choice of parameter. A parameterized problem  is a subset of  for some fixed alphabet . An instance  of  contains the problem input  and the parameter value . A parameterized problem is fixed-parameter tractable there is a deterministic algorithm that for each instance  decides whether  and that runs in time , where  is a computable function of , and  is a fixed constant. Algorithms running within such time bounds are called fpt-algorithms. The idea behind these definitions is that fixed-parameter tractable running times are scalable whenever the value of  is small.

A commonly used parameter is that of the treewidth of a graph. Intuitively, the treewidth measures the extent to which a graph is like a tree—trees and forests have treewidth 1, cycles have treewidth 2, and so forth. The notion of treewidth is defined as follows. A tree decomposition of a graph is a pair where is a tree and is a family of subsets of such that:

• for every , the set is nonempty and connected in ; and

• for every edge , there is a such that .

The width of the decomposition is the number . The treewidth of is the minimum of the widths of all tree decompositions of . Let  be a graph and  a nonnegative integer. There is an fpt-algorithm that computes a tree decomposition of  of width  if it exists, and fails otherwise [Bodlaender1996].

##### Encoding Results

We can then use results from the literature to establish tractability results for computing outcomes of various judgment aggregation procedures for integrity constraints whose variable interactions have a treelike structure. Let  be a CNF formula. The incidence graph of  is the graph , where  and . The incidence treewidth of  is defined as the treewidth of the incidence graph of .

We can leverage the results of Theorems 9 and 10 and Corollary 11 to get fixed-parameter tractability results for computing outcomes of med, mcc, rev and ra for integrity constraints with small incidence treewidth.

###### Proposition 14 (OztokDarwiche14 OztokDarwiche14, BovaCapelliMengelSlivovsky15 BovaCapelliMengelSlivovsky15).

Let  be a CNF formula of incidence treewidth . Constructing a DNNF circuit  that is equivalent to  can be done in fixed-parameter tractable time.

###### Corollary 15.

The problems Outcome(med), Outcome(mcc), Outcome(rev) and Outcome(ra) are fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the incidence treewidth of .

## Case Study: Budget Constraints

In this section, we illustrate how the results of the previous section can contribute to providing a computational complexity analysis for an application setting. The setting that we consider as an example is that of budget constraints. This setting is closely related to that of Participatory Budgeting (see, e.g., BenadeNathProcacciaShah17 BenadeNathProcacciaShah17), where citizens propose projects and vote on which projects get funded by public money. In the setting that we consider, each issue  represents whether or not some measure is implemented. Each such measure has an implementation cost  associated with it. Moreover, there is a total budget  that cannot be exceeded—that is, each ballot (individual or collective) can set a set of variables  to true such that the cumulative cost of these variables is at most  (and set the remaining variables to false). The integrity constraint  encodes that the total budget  cannot be exceeded by the total cost of the variables that are set to true. (For the sake of simplicity, we assume that all costs and the total budget are all positive integers.)

The concepts and tools from judgment aggregation are useful and relevant in this setting. This is witnessed, for instance, by the fact that simply taking a majority vote will not always lead to a suitable collective outcome. Consider the example where there are three measures that are each associated with cost , and where there is a budget of . Moreover, suppose that there are three individuals. The first individual votes to implement measures  and ; the second votes for measures  and , and the third for  and . Each of the individuals’ opinions is consistent with the budget. However, taking a majority measure-by-measure vote results in implementing all three issues, which exceeds the budget. (In other words, the individual opinions  are all rational, whereas the collective majority opinion  is not.) This example is illustrated in Figure 2—in this figure, we encode the budget constraint using a DNNF circuit .

### Encoding into a Polynomial-Size DNNF Circuit

To use the framework of judgment aggregation to model settings with budget constraints, we need to encode budget constraints using integrity constraints . One can do this in several ways. We consider an encoding using DNNF circuits (as in Figure 1(b)). Let  be a set of issues, let  be a vector of implementation costs, and let  be a total budget. We say that an integrity constraint  encodes the budget constraint for  and  if for each complete ballot  it holds that  satisfies  if and only if .

We can encode budget constraints efficiently using DNNF circuits by expressing them as binary decision diagrams. A binary decision diagram (BDD) is a particular type of NNF circuit. Let  be an NNF circuit. We say that a node  of  is a decision node if (i) it is a leaf or (ii) it is a disjunction node expressing , where  and  and  are decision nodes. A binary decision diagram is an NNF circuit whose root is a decision node. A free binary decision diagram (FBDD) is a BDD that satisfies decomposability (see, e.g., DarwicheMarquis02 DarwicheMarquis02, GergovMeinel94 GergovMeinel94).

###### Theorem 16.

For each  and , we can construct a DNNF circuit  encoding the budget constraint for  and  in time polynomial in .

###### Proof.

We construct an FBDD  encoding the budget constraint for  and  as follows. Without loss of generality, suppose that  for each . Let . We introduce a decision node  for each  and . Take arbitrary  and . If , we let . If , we distinguish two cases: either (i)  or (ii) , where .. In case (i), we let . In case (ii), we let . We let the root of the FBDD be the node —and we remove all nodes that are not descendants of . Intuitively, the subcircuit rooted at  represents all truth assignments to the variables  that fit within a budget of . For each node  it holds that the variables in the leaves reachable from  are among . Therefore, we constructed an FBDD. Moreover, each complete ballot  satisfies the circuit  if and only if . Thus,  is a DNNF circuit constructed in time polynomial in  encoding the budget constraint for  and . ∎

An example of a DNNF circuit resulting from the encoding described in the proof of Theorem 16—after some simplifications—can be found in Figure 1(b).

### Complexity Results

Using the encoding result of Theorem 16, we can establish polynomial-time solvability results for computing outcomes for several judgment aggregation procedures in the setting of budget constraints.

###### Corollary 17.

Outcome(med), Outcome(mcc), Outcome(rev), and Outcome(ra) are polynomial-time computable when restricted to the case where  expresses a budget constraint.

###### Proof.

The result follows from Theorems 9, 10 and 16, and Corollary 11. ∎

For the young and maxham procedures, we obtain intractability results for the case of budget constraints—for both procedures computing outcomes is -hard.

###### Proposition⋆ 18.

Outcome(young) is -hard when restricted to the case where  expresses a budget constraint.

###### Corollary 19.

Outcome(maxham) is -hard when restricted to the case where  expresses a budget constraint.

###### Proof.

The result follows directly from Proposition 4. ∎

An overview of the complexity results that we established in this section can be found in Table 5.

## Directions for Future Research

In this paper, we provided a set of initial results for restricted languages for judgment aggregation, but these results are only the tip of the iceberg that is to be explored. We outline some directions for interesting future work on this topic.

One first direction is to establish the complexity of Outcome(F) for cases that are left open in this paper—for example, for young and rev for the case of Krom and (definite) Horn formulas. Another direction is to pinpoint the complexity of Outcome(F) for the languages that we considered for other judgment aggregation rules studied in the literature (see, e.g., LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17 LangPigozziSlavkovikVanderTorreVesic17).

Yet another direction is to extend tractability results obtained in this paper—e.g., for Krom and Horn formulas—to formulas that are ‘close’ to Krom or Horn formulas. One could use the notion of backdoors for this (see, e.g., GaspersSzeider12 GaspersSzeider12).

Finally, further restricted languages of propositional formulas or Boolean circuits need to be studied, to get a more complete picture of where the boundaries of the expressivity-tractability balance lie in the setting of judgment aggregation. A good source for additional languages is the field of knowledge compilation (see, e.g., DarwicheMarquis02 DarwicheMarquis02, Darwiche14 Darwiche14, Marquis15 Marquis15), where many restricted languages have been studied with respect to their expressivity and support for performing various operations tractably.

## Conclusion

In this paper, we initiated the hunt for representation languages for the setting of judgment aggregation that strike a balance between (1) allowing relevant computational tasks to be performed efficiently and (2) being expressive enough to model interesting and relevant application settings. Concretely, we considered Krom and (definite) Horn formulas, and we studied the class of Boolean circuits in DNNF. We studied the impact of these languages on the complexity of computing outcomes for a number of judgment aggregation procedures studied in the literature. Additionally, we illustrated the use of these languages for a specific application setting: voting on how to spend a budget.

## Appendix A Appendix: Preliminaries

We give an overview of some notions from propositional logic and computational complexity that we use in the paper.

### Propositional Logic

Propositional formulas are constructed from propositional variables using the Boolean operators , and . A literal is a propositional variable  (a positive literal) or a negated variable  (a negative literal). A clause is a finite set of literals, not containing a complementary pair , and is interpreted as the disjunction of these literals. A formula in conjunctive normal form (CNF) is a finite set of clauses, interpreted as the conjunction of these clauses. For each , an -clause is a clause that contains at most  literals, and denotes the class of all CNF formulas consisting only of -clauses. is also denoted by Krom, and 2CNF formulas are also known as Krom formulas. A Horn clause is a clause that contains at most one positive literal. A definite Horn clause is a clause that contains exactly one positive literal. We let Horn denote the class of all CNF formulas that contain only Horn clauses (Horn formulas), and we let DefHorn denote the class of all CNF formulas that contain only definite Horn clauses (definite Horn formulas).

For a propositional formula Var denotes the set of all variables occurring in . Moreover, for a set  of variables, Lit denotes the set of all literals over variables in , i.e., . We use the standard notion of (truth) assignments  for Boolean formulas and truth of a formula under such an assignment. For any formula  and any truth assignment , we let  denote the formula obtained from  by instantiating variables  in the domain of  with  and simplifying the formula accordingly. By a slight abuse of notation, if  is defined on all Var, we let  denote the truth value of  under .

### Computational Complexity Theory

We assume the reader to be familiar with the complexity classes P and NP, and with basic notions such as polynomial-time reductions. For more details, we refer to textbooks on computational complexity theory (see, e.g., AroraBarak09 AroraBarak09).

In this paper, we also refer to the complexity classes and that consist of all decision problems that can be solved by a polynomial-time algorithm that queries an NP oracle  or  times, respectively. Formally, algorithms with access to an oracle are defined as follows. Let

be a decision problem. A Turing machine

with access to an  oracle is a Turing machine with a dedicated oracle tape and dedicated states  and . Whenever  is in the state , it does not proceed according to the transition relation, but instead it transitions into the state  if the oracle tape contains a string  that is a yes-instance for the problem , i.e., if , and it transitions into the state  if . Intuitively, the oracle solves arbitrary instances of  in a single time step. The class (resp. ) consists of all decision problems  for which there exists a deterministic Turing machine that decides for each instance  of size  whether  in time polynomial in  by querying some oracle  at most  (resp. ) times.

Let  be a class of propositional formulas. The following problem is complete for the class under polynomial-time reductions when  is the class of all propositional formulas [Chen and Toda1995, Krentel1988, Wagner1990].

Instance: A satisfiable propositional formula , and a variable . Question: Is there a model of  that sets a maximal number of variables in Var to true (among all models of ) and that sets  to true?

For any class  of propositional formulas, we let  denote the problem Max-Model restricted to formulas .

#### Acknowledgments.

This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project J4047.

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## Appendix B Additional Material: Lemmas and Proofs

As additional material, we provide proofs for all statements in the main paper marked with a star (), as well as additional lemmas used for these proofs.

is -complete.

###### Proof.

We sketch a reduction from Max-Model for arbitrary propositional formulas. Let  be an instance of Max-Model. By using the standard Tseitin transformation, we can transform  into a 3CNF formula  with  for some set  of new variables, such that for each truth assignment  it holds that  is true if and only if there exists a truth assignment  such that  is true.

We then transform  into a 3CNF formula  with , for the set  of fresh variables, such that the maximal models of  correspond exactly to the maximal models of . We define  as follows:

 φ′′=φ′∧⋀z∈Z((¬z∨¬z′)∧(z∨z′)).

Each model of  then must set the same number of variables in  to true—namely  of them. ∎

is -complete.

###### Proof.

We give a reduction from . Let  be an instance of , where  and where  consists of the clauses . Without loss of generality, we may assume that each clause  is of size exactly 3. Also, without loss of generality, we may assume that  is satisfied by the “all zeroes” assignment, that is, by the assignment  such that  for all . Moreover, we may assume without loss of generality that . We construct an instance  of as follows.

For each clause , we introduce fresh variables  and , for  and . Moreover, for each , we introduce fresh variables  for  and  for . We then let  consist of the following clauses. For each , we add the clauses:

 (¬y1j∨¬y2j),(¬y1j∨¬y3j),(¬y2j∨¬y3j),

ensuring that at most one variable among  can be true. Moreover, for each  and each , we add the clauses:

 (yuj→yuj,1),(yuj,1→yuj,2),…,(yuj,n−1→yuj,n),(yuj,n→yuj),

ensuring that the variables  and  get the same truth value, for each  and each .

Then, for each , we add the clause , ensuring that at most one variable among  is true. Moreover for each  we add the clauses:

 (x1i→z1i,1),(z1i,1→z1i,2),…,(z1i,m→z1i,m+1),(z1i,m+1→x1i),

and:

 (x0i→z0i,1),(z0i,1→z0i,2),…,(z0i,m−1→z0i,m),(z0i,m→x0i),

ensuring that the variables