# Utilitarian Welfare and Representation Guarantees of Approval-Based Multiwinner Rules

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01527 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01527/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jan 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Subset Selection Based On Multiple Rankings in the Presence of Bias: Effectiveness of Fairness Constraints for Multiwinner Voting Score Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09835/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To choose a suitable multiwinner voting rule is a hard and ambiguous task. Depending on the context, it varies widely what constitutes the choice of an ``optimal'' subset of alternatives. In this paper, we provide a quantitative analysis of multiwinner voting rules using methods from the theory of approximation algorithms---we estimate how well multiwinner rules approximate two extreme objectives: a representation criterion defined via the Approval Chamberlin--Courant rule and a utilitarian criterion defined via Multiwinner Approval Voting. With both theoretical and experimental methods, we classify multiwinner rules in terms of their quantitative alignment with these two opposing objectives. Our results provide fundamental information about the nature of multiwinner rules and, in particular, about the necessary tradeoffs when choosing such a rule.