Consensus in distributed soft environments

This paper studies the problem of formalizing consensus reaching within a set of decision makers trying to find and agree upon a mutual decision. Decision makers produce their individual rankings, using their own pet decision schemas. Thus consensus reaching relies only on the aggregation of individual decisions rather than on individual decision procedures. The aggregation of the individual rankings is supported by an advising monitor which tries to contract the decision makers into a mutual decision through soft enforcement. Convergence to consensus then depends upon the decision makers’ willingness to compromise. The authors use a topological approach to consensus where they can measure distances between decision makers. Within the approach the authors can also model the trade-off between a degree of consensus and a strength of majority.