A qualitative theory of conflict resolution and political compromise

In the present work, we consider a basic model of political structure, given through its agents or forces and the viable configurations of agents as collective bodies of decision making. When the set of all agents is not viable, a compromise must be searched for. We model a political structure as a simplicial complex where a viable configuration is a simplex. A represented compromise is a viable configuration obtained by the withdrawal of some agents in favor of other agents acting as representatives. A delegated compromise is a more elaborated version of a compromise obtained by iteration of the process of delegation. Existence of such compromises depends on the discrete topology of the simplicial complex. In the paper, we study represented and delegated compromises in their dependence on the combinatorial structure of the viable configurations, and in particular we show that existence of a delegated compromise is equivalent to strong contractibility of the simplicial complex.