Tech Reports

ULCS-03-014

Structuring Dialogue between The People and Their Representatives

Katie Greenwood, Trevor Bench-Capon and Peter McBurney


Abstract

Conversations between citizens and their representatives may take a number of forms. In this paper, we consider one of these - letters between citizens and representatives - and explore the application of a well-known model of dialogue types to these. We provide a method to give these types a precise characterization in terms of the initial beliefs and desires of the participants, and then explore one of these, persuasion dialogues. The work commences the formal modeling of citizen-representative interactions necessary for a fully electronic democracy.

[Full Paper]