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  <front>
    <journal-meta />
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Quantified Group Responsibility in Multi-Agent Systems</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Vahid Yazdanpanah</string-name>
          <email>v.yazdanpanah@utwente.nl</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff0">0</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Mehdi Dastani</string-name>
          <email>m.m.dastani@uu.nl</email>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <aff id="aff0">
          <label>0</label>
          <institution>Department of Industrial Engineering, and Business Information Systems, University of Twente</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Enschede</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="NL">The Netherlands</country>
        </aff>
        <aff id="aff1">
          <label>1</label>
          <institution>Department of Information, and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University</institution>
          ,
          <addr-line>Utrecht</addr-line>
          ,
          <country country="NL">The Netherlands</country>
        </aff>
      </contrib-group>
      <fpage>44</fpage>
      <lpage>49</lpage>
      <abstract>
        <p>-This paper 1 builds on an existing notion of group responsibility and proposes two ways to define the degree of group responsibility: structural and functional degrees of responsibility. These notions measure potential responsibilities of agent groups for avoiding a state of affairs. According to these notions, a degree of responsibility for a state of affairs can be assigned to a group of agents if, and to the extent that, the group of the agents have potential to preclude the state of affairs. These notions will be formally specified and their properties will be analyzed.</p>
      </abstract>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>I. INTRODUCTION</title>
      <p>
        The concept of responsibility has been extensively
investigated in philosophy and computer science. Each proposal
focuses on specific aspects of responsibility. For example,
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ] focuses on the causal aspect of responsibility and
defines a notion of graded responsibility, [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3">3</xref>
        ] focuses on the
organizational aspect of responsibility, [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4">4</xref>
        ] argues that group
responsibility should be distributed to individual responsibility,
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5">5</xref>
        ] focuses on the interaction aspect of responsibility and
defines an agent’s responsibility in terms of the agent’s causal
contribution, and [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ] focuses on the strategic aspect of group
responsibility and defines various notions of group
responsibility. In some of these proposals, the concept of responsibility
is defined with respect to a realized event “in past” while
in other approaches it is defined as the responsibility for
the realization of some event “in future”. This introduces a
major dimension of responsibility, namely backward-looking
and forward-looking responsibility [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref7">7</xref>
        ]. Backward-looking
approaches reason about level of causality or contribution of
agents in the occurrence of an already realized outcome
while forward-looking notions are focused on the capacities
of agents towards a state of affairs.
      </p>
      <p>
        Although some of the existing approaches are designed to
measure the degree of responsibility, they either constitute
a backward-looking (instead of forward-looking) notion of
responsibility [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ], provide qualitative (instead of quantitative)
levels of responsibility [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref8">8</xref>
        ], or focus on individual (instead
of group) responsibility [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5">5</xref>
        ]. To our knowledge, there is no
forward-looking approach that could measure the degree of
group responsibility quantitatively. Such notion would enable
reasoning on the potential responsibility of an agent group
1The original version of this work appears in [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1">1</xref>
        ].
towards a state of affairs in strategic settings, e.g., collective
decision making scenarios. In this paper, we build on a
forward-looking approach to group responsibility and define
two notions of responsibility degrees. The first concept is
based on the partial or complete power of an agent group to
preclude a state of affairs while the second concept is based
on the potentiality of an agent group to reach a state where
the agent group possesses the complete power to preclude the
state of affairs. This results in a distinction between what we
will call the “structural responsibility” versus the “functional
responsibility” of an agent group. In our proposal, an agent
group has the full responsibility, if it has an action profile
to preclude the state of affairs. All other agent groups that
do not have full responsibility, but may have contribution to
responsible agent groups, will be assigned a partial degree of
responsibility.
      </p>
      <p>II. GROUP RESPONSIBILITY: A POWER-BASED ANALYSIS</p>
      <p>
        In order to illustrate our conception of group responsibility
and the nuances in degrees of responsibility, we follow [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2">2</xref>
        ] and
use a voting scenario to explain the degree of responsibility
of agents’ groups for voting outcomes. The voting scenario
considers a small congress with ten members consisting of vfie
Democrats (D), three Republicans (R), and two Greens (G).
We assume that there is a voting in progress on a specific bill
(B). Without losing generality and to reduce the combinatorial
complexity of the setting, we assume that all members of a
party vote either in favour of or against the bill B. Table I
illustrates the eight possible voting outcomes. Note that in this
scenario, six positive votes are sufficient for the approval of
B. For example, row 4 shows the case where R and D vote
against B and the bill is disapproved. For this case we say that
the group RD votes against B. It should also be noted that our
assumption reduces parties to individual agents with specific
weights such that the question raises as why we use this party
setting instead of a simple voting of three agents whose votes
have different weights. The motivation is that this setting is
realistic and makes the weighted votes of each agent (party)
more intuitive.
      </p>
      <p>
        Following [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ] we believe that it is reasonable to assign the
responsibility for a specific state of affairs to a group of agents
      </p>
      <p>TABLE I</p>
      <p>VOTING RESULTS
G(2)</p>
      <p>R(3)</p>
      <p>D(5)</p>
      <p>
        Result
if they jointly have the power to avoid the state of affairs2.
According to [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref9">9</xref>
        ], the preclusive power is the ability of a
group to preclude a given state of affairs which entails that
a group with preclusive power, has the potential but might
not practice the preclusion of a given state of affairs. For our
voting scenario, this suggests to assign responsibility to the
group GR consisting of parties G and R since they can jointly
disapprove B. Note that the state of affair to be avoided can
also be the state of affairs where B is disapproved. In this
case, the group can be assigned the responsibility to avoid
disproving B. Similarly, groups D, GD, RD, and GRD have
preclusive power with respect to the approval of B as they
have sufficient members (weights) to avoid the approval of B.
Note that none of the other two groups, i.e., G and R, could
preclude the approval of B independently. However, based on
[
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ], the agent groups that consist of a smaller sub-group with
preclusive power, must be excluded from the set of responsible
groups. Hence, we consider GR and D as being responsible
groups for the approval of B. The intuition for this concept of
responsibility is supported by the fact that the lobby groups are
willing (i.e., it is economically rational) to invest resources in
parties that have the power to avoid a specific state of affairs.
      </p>
      <p>
        We build on the ideas in [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ] and propose two orthogonal
approaches to capture our conception of degree of group
responsibility towards a state of affairs. Our intuition suggests
that the degree of responsibility of a group of agents towards
a state of affairs should reflect the extent they structurally or
functionally can contribute to the groups that have preclusive
power with respect to the state of affairs.
      </p>
      <p>
        Our conception of structural responsibility degree is based
on the following observation in the voting scenario. We deem
that regarding the approval of B, although the groups G and
R have no preclusive power independently, they nevertheless
have a share in the composition of GR with preclusive
power regarding the approval of B. Hence, we say that any
2See [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ] for a detailed discussion on why to focus on avoiding instead
of enforcing a state of affairs.
group that shares members with responsible groups, should be
assigned a degree of responsibility that reflects its proportional
contribution to the groups with preclusive power. For example,
group R with three members, has larger share in GR than the
group G has. Therefore, we believe that the relative size of a
group and its share in the groups with the preclusive power
are substantial parameters in formulation of the notion of
responsibility degree. In this case, the larger share of R in GR
in comparison with the share of G in GR will be positively
reflected in R’s responsibility degree. These parameters will
be explained in details later. We would like to emphasize that
this concept of responsibility degree is supported by the fact
that lobby groups do proportionally support political parties
that can play a role in some key decisions. In a sense, the
lobby groups consider political parties responsible for some
decision and therefore they are willing to support the parties.
      </p>
      <p>The second approach in capturing the notion of functional
responsibility degree addresses the dynamics of preclusive
power of a specific group. Suppose that the bill B was
about declaration of the congress to the President (P ) which
enables P to start a war (Table II). Roughly speaking, P
will be in charge only after the approval of the congress.
When we are reasoning at the moment when the voting is
in progress in the congress, it is reasonable to assume that
groups GR and D are responsible as they have preclusive
power to avoid the war. Moreover, after the approval of B,
the President P is the only group with preclusive power to
avoid the war. Hence, we believe that although P alone would
not have the preclusive power before the approval of B in the
congress, it is rationally justifiable for an anti-war campaign
to invest resources on P , even before the approval voting of
the congress, simply because there exists possibilities where P
will have the preclusive power to avoid the war. Accordingly,
a reasonable differentiation could be made between the groups
which do have the chance of acquiring the preclusive power
and those they do not have any chance of power acquisition.
This functional notion of responsibility degree addresses the
eventuality of a state in which an agent group possesses the
preclusive power regarding a given state of affairs.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-2">
      <title>III. MODELS AND PRELIMINARY NOTIONS</title>
      <p>
        The behaviour of a multi-agent system is often modelled
by concurrent game structures (CGS) [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">10</xref>
        ]. Such structures
specify possible state of the system, agents’ abilities at each
state, and the outcome of concurrent actions at each state.
Definition 1 (Concurrent game structures [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref10">10</xref>
        ]). A concurrent
game structure is a tuple M = (N, Q, Act, d, o), where N =
{1, ..., k} is a nonempty finite set of agents, Q is a nonempty
set of system states, Act is a nonempty and finite set of atomic
actions, d : N × Q → P(Act) is a function that identifies
the set of available actions for each agent i ∈ N at each
state q ∈ Q, and o is a deterministic and partial transition
function that assigns a state q0 = o(q, α1, ..., αk) to a state
q and an action profile (α1, ..., αk) such that all k agents in
N choose actions in the action profile respectively. An action
profile α¯ = (α1, ..., αk) is a sequence that consists of actions
αi ∈ d(i, q) for all players in N . In case o(q, α1, ..., αk) is
undefined then o(q, α10, ..., αk0) is undefined for each action
profile (α10, ..., αk0). For the sake of notation simplicity, d(i, q)
will be written as di(q) and dC (q) := Qi∈C di(q).
      </p>
      <p>
        A state of affairs refers to a set S ⊆ Q, S¯ denotes the set
Q \ S, and (αC , αN\C ) denotes the action profile, where αC
is the actions of the agents in group C and αN\C denotes the
actions of the rest of the agents. Following the setting of [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ],
we recall the definitions of q-enforce, q-avoid, q-responsible
and weakly q-responsible (See [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ] for details and properties of
these notions).
      </p>
      <p>
        Definition 2 (Agent groups: strategic abilities and
responsibility [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ]). Let M = (N, Q, Act, d, o) be a CGS, q ∈ Q
be a specific state, and S a state of affairs. We have the
following concepts: 1) C ⊆ N can q-enforce S in M iff there
is a joint action αC ∈ dC (q) such that for all joint actions
αN\C ∈ dN\C (q), o(q, (αC , αN\C )) ∈ S; 2) C ⊆ N can
qavoid S in M iff for all αN\C ∈ dN\C (q) there is αC ∈ dC (q)
such that o(q, (αC , αN\C )) ∈ S¯; 3) C ⊆ N is q-responsible
for S in M iff C can q-enforce S¯ and for all other C0 ⊆ N
that can q-enforce S¯, we have that C ⊆ C0; 3) C ⊆ N is
weakly q-responsible for S in M 3 iff C is a minimal group
that can q-enforce S¯.
      </p>
      <p>
        Considering the voting scenario from Section II, groups
GD, RD and GRD can qs-enforce the approval of B while
groups D, GR, GD, RD, and GRD can qs-avoid the approval
of B. In this scenario, qs denotes the starting moment of the
voting progress. Note that the notions of q-enforce and q-avoid
correlate with the notions of, respectively, α-effectivity and
βeffectivity in [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref11">11</xref>
        ]. In this scenario, we have no qs-responsible
group for approval of B and two groups D and GR are weakly
qs-responsible for the approval of B. Note that the groups GD,
RD, and GRD are not weakly qs-responsible for the approval
of B as they are not minimal.
      </p>
      <p>The concept of (weakly) q-responsibility merely assigns
responsibility to groups with preclusive power and considers
all other groups as not being responsible. As we have argued
in section II, we believe that responsibility can be assigned
to all groups, even those without preclusive power, though
to a certain degree including zero degree. In order to define
our notions of responsibility degree, we first introduce two
notions of structural power difference and power acquisition
sequence. Given an arbitrary group C, a state q, and a state
of affair S, the first notion concerns the number of missing
elements in C that when added to C makes it a (weakly)
qresponsible groups for a S, and the second notion concerns a
sequence of action profiles from given state q that leads to a
state q0 where C is (weakly) q0-responsible for S. According
to the first notion, group C can gain preclusive power for S
if supported by some additional members, and according to
3In further references, “in M ” might be omitted wherever it is clear from
the context.
the second notion C can gain preclusive power for S in some
potentially reachable state.</p>
      <p>Let M be a multi-agent system, S a state of affairs in M , C
an arbitrary group, and Cˆ be a (weakly) q-responsible group
for S in M .</p>
      <p>Definition 3 (Power measures). We say that the structural
power difference of C and Cˆ in q ∈ Q with respect to
S, denoted by ΘqS,M (Cˆ, C), is equal to cardinality of Cˆ\C.
Moreover, we say that C has a power acquisition sequence
hα¯1, ..., α¯ni in q0 ∈ Q for S in M iff for qi ∈ Q, o(qi, α¯i) =
qi+1 for 1 ≤ i ≤ n such that q0 = q1 and qn+1 = q00 and C
is (weakly) q00-responsible for S in M .</p>
      <p>Consider the war approval declaration of the congress to
the president (P ) in Section II. Here, we can see that the
structural power difference of the group G and the weakly
qsresponsible group GR is equal to 3. Moreover, the singleton
group P that is not responsible in qs has the opportunity of
being responsible for the war in states other than qs. Note that
power acquisition sequence does not necessarily need to be
unique. If the group C is not (weakly) responsible in a state q,
the existence of any power acquisition sequence with a length
higher than zero implies that the group could potentially reach
a state q0 (from the current state of q) where C is (weakly)
q0responsible for S. This notion also covers the cases where C
is already in a (weakly) responsible state where the minimum
length of power acquisition sequence is taken to be zero.
In this case, the group is already (weakly) q-responsible for
S. For example, in the voting scenario, group D is weakly
responsible for the state of affairs and therefore, the minimum
length of a power acquisition sequence is zero. When we are
reasoning in a source state q, the notion of power acquisition
sequence, enables us to differentiate between the non (weakly)
q-responsible groups that do have the opportunity of becoming
(weakly) q0-responsible for a given state of affairs (q 6= q0) and
those they do not. Moreover, we emphasize that the availability
of a power acquisition sequence for an arbitrary group C
from a source state q to a state q0 in which C is (weakly)
q-responsible for the state of affairs, does not necessitate the
existence of an independent strategy for C to reach q0 from q.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-3">
      <title>IV. STRUCTURAL DEGREE OF RESPONSIBILITY</title>
      <p>Structural degree of responsibility addresses the preclusive
power of a group for a given state of affairs by means of
the maximum contribution that the group has in a (weakly)
responsible group for the state of affairs. To illustrate the
intuition behind this notion, consider again the voting scenario
in the section II. If an anti-war campaign wants to invest its
limited resources to prevent the bill start a war, we deem that
it is reasonable to invest more on R than G, if the resources
admit such a choice. Although neither R nor G could prevent
the war individually, larger contribution of R in groups with
preclusive power, i.e. GR and D, entitles R to be assigned
with larger degree of responsibility than G. This intuition
will be reflected in the formulation of structural degree of
responsibility.
Definition 4 (Structural degree of responsibility). Let WqS,M
denote the set of all (weakly) q-responsible groups for state
of affairs S in multi-agent system M , and C ⊆ N be an
arbitrary group. In case WqS,M = ∅, the structural degree of
q-responsibility of any C for S in M is undefined; otherwise,
the structural degree of q-responsibility of C for S in M
denoted SDRqS,M (C), is defined as follows:</p>
      <p>SDRqS,M (C) = Cˆ∈mWaqSx,M ({i | i = 1 −
ΘqS,M (Cˆ,C) )
|Cˆ| }
Proposition 1 (Full structural responsibility). The structural
degree of q-responsibility of group C for S is equal to 1 iff C
is either a (weakly) q-responsible group for S or C ⊇ Cˆ such
that Cˆ is (weakly) q-responsible for S.</p>
      <p>
        Proof. Follows directly from Definition 4 and definition of
(weak) responsibility in [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>Example 1. Consider again the voting scenario from Section
II (Figure 1). In this scenario, we have an initial state qs
in which all voters can use their votes in favour or against
the approval of the bill B (no abstention or null vote is
allowed). The majority of six votes (or more) in favour of B
will be considered as the state of affairs consisting of states
q7, q5 and q3. This multi-agent system can be modelled as
CGS M = (N, Q, Act, d, o), where N = {1, ..., 10}, Q =
{qs, q0, ..., q7}, Act = {0, 1, wait}, di(qs) = {0, 1} and
di(q) = {wait} for all i ∈ N and q ∈ Q \ {qs}. Voters are
situated in three parties such that G = {1, 2}, R = {3, 4, 5}
and D = {6, 7, 8, 9, 10}. For notation convenience, actions
of party members will be written collectively in the action
profiles, e.g., we write (0, 1, 0) to denote the action profile
(0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0). The outcome function is as
illustrated in Figure 1 (e.g., o(qs, (0, 0, 1)) = q1 is illustrated by
the arrow from qs to q1). Moreover, the simplifying assumption
that all party members vote collectively is implemented by
o(qs, α¯0) = qs for all possible action profiles α¯0 in which party
members act differently. We observe that the set of weakly
qs-responsible groups in this example is {GR, D}. Using
Definition 4, the structural degree of qs-responsibility of G will
be equal to max({2/5, 0/5}) = 2/5 and SDRqSs (R) = 3/5.
A similar calculation leads to the conclusion that the structural
degree of qs-responsibility for all (weakly) qs-responsible
groups, i.e., GR and D, and their super-sets is equal to 1.
The structural degree of qs-responsibility of empty group (∅)
is equal to 0 as the structural power difference of the empty
group with all (weakly) qs-responsible groups Cˆ is equal to
the cardinality of Cˆ.</p>
      <p>A group C might share members with various (weakly)
qresponsible groups, therefore the largest structural share of C
in (weakly) q-responsible groups for S, will be considered
to form the SDRqS (C). We would like to stress that our
notions for responsibility degrees are formulated based on the
maximum expected power of a group to preclude a state of
affairs. While we believe that in legal theory, and with respect
to its backward-looking approach, the minimum preclusive
power of a group need be taken into account for assessing
(0,1,1)</p>
      <p>α¯0
(0,0,1) (0, 0, 0)
¯
S
q6
q1
q0
culpability, our focus as a forward-looking approach will be
on maximum expected preclusive power of a group regarding
a given state of affairs.</p>
      <p>The following lemma introduces a responsibility paradox
case in which our presented notion of structural degree of
responsibility is not applicable as a notion for reasoning about
responsibility of groups of agents.</p>
      <p>Lemma 1 (Applicability constraint: responsibility paradox).
The empty group is (unique) q-responsible for S iff the
structural degree of q-responsibility of all possible groups C
for S is equal to 1.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-4">
      <title>Proof. See [1] for the proof.</title>
      <p>
        The common avoidability of S implies that the occurrence
of S is impossible by means of any action profile in q. In
other words, given the specification of a CGS model M , a
state of of affairs S and a source state q in M , no action
profile α¯ leads to a state qs ∈ S. Common avoidability of a
state of affairs, correlates with the impossibility notion ¬♦S
in modal logic [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref12">12</xref>
        ]. An impossible state of affairs S in q,
entitles all the possible groups to be “fully responsible”. The
impossibility of S neutralizes the space of groups with respect
to their structural degree of q-responsibility for S. Therefore,
we believe that in cases where the empty group is responsible
for a given state of affairs, as S is impossible, full degree
of structural responsibility of a group is not an apt measure,
does not imply the preclusive power of any group, and hence,
not an applicable reasoning notion for one who is willing
to invest resources in the groups of agents that have the
preclusive power over S. Note that in case the empty set is
not responsible for S, its structural degree of responsibility
is equal to 0 because its structural power difference with all
(weakly) responsible groups Cˆ is equal to the cardinality of
Cˆ.
      </p>
      <p>The next theorem illustrates a case in which a singleton
group possesses the preclusive power over a state of affairs.</p>
      <p>The existence of such a dictator agent in a state q, polarizes
Theorem 1 (Polarizing dictatorship). Let Cˆ be a singleton
group, q an arbitrary state and S a possible state of affairs
(in sense of Lemma 1). Then, Cˆ is a (unique) q-responsible
group for S iff for any arbitrary group C, SDRqS (C) ∈ {0, 1},
where SDRqS (C ∈ I) = 1 and SDRqS (C ∈ O) = 0 for
I = {C|C ⊇ C} and O = {C|C + Cˆ}.</p>
      <p>ˆ</p>
      <p>
        As our concept of group responsibility is based on the
preclusive power of a group over a given state of affairs, the
following monotonicity property shows that increasing the size
of a group by adding new elements, does not have a negative
effect on the preclusive power. This property, as formulated
below, correlates with the monotonicity of power and power
indices [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref13">13</xref>
        ].
      </p>
      <p>SDRqS (C) ≤ SDRqS (C0).</p>
      <p>Proposition 2 (Structural monotonicity). Let C and C0 be
two arbitrary groups such that C ⊆ C0. If WqS,M 6= ∅ then</p>
      <p>The following theorem shows that in case of existence of
a unique nonempty q-responsible group for a state of affairs,
the structural degree of q-responsibility of any group could
be calculated cumulatively based on the degrees of disjoint
subsets. In this case, for any two arbitrary groups C1 and C2,
the summation of their structural degree of q-responsibility
will be equal to the degree of the unified group.</p>
      <p>Theorem 2 (Conditional cumulativity). If there exists a
nonempty (unique) q-responsible group for S, then for any
arbitrary group C and partition P = {C1, ..., Cn} of C, we
have Pn</p>
      <p>i=1 SDRqS (Ci) = SDRqS (C).</p>
      <p>Functional degree of responsibility addresses the dynamics
of preclusive power of a specific group with respect to a given
state of affairs. We remind the example from Section II where
the president will be in charge, regarding the war decision,
only after the approval of the congress. It is our understanding
that the existence of a sequence of action profiles that leads to
a state where the president becomes responsible for the war
decision rationalizes the investment of an anti-war campaign
on the president, even before the approval of the congress.</p>
      <p>The functional degree of responsibility of a group C in
a state q will be calculated based on the notion of power
acquisition sequence by tracing the number of necessary state
transitions from q, in order to reach a state q0 in which the
group C is (weakly) q0-responsible for S. The length of a
shortest power acquisition sequence form q to q0, illustrates
the potentiality of preclusive power of the group C. If two
groups have the capacity of reaching a state in which they have
the preclusive power over the state of affairs S, we say that
Definition 5 (Functional degree of responsibility). Let
PqS,M (C) denote the set of all power acquisition sequences
of group C ⊆ N in q for S in M . Let also ` = min ({i |
k∈PqS,M (C)
i = length(k)}) be the length of a shortest power acquisition
sequence. The functional degree of q-responsibility of C for S
in M , denoted by F DRqS,M (C), is defined as follows:
0
F DRqS,M (C) =</p>
      <p>1
(`+1)
Proposition 3 (Full functionality implies full responsibility).
Let Cˆ be a group, q an arbitrary state and S a given state
of affairs. If F DRqS (Cˆ) = 1, then the structural degree of
q-responsibility of Cˆ for S is equal to 1.
if PqS,M (C) = ∅
otherwise</p>
    </sec>
    <sec id="sec-5">
      <title>Proof. See [1] for the proof.</title>
      <p>Example 2 (War powers resolution). Consider again the
voting scenario in the congress, as explained in Section II;
but now extended with a new president agent P . The decision
of starting a war W should first be approved by a majority of
the congress members (six votes or more in favour of W )
after which the president makes the final decision. Hence,
P has the preclusive power which is conditioned on the
approval of the congress members. Moreover, we have a
simplifying assumption that no party member acts independently
and thus assume that all members of a party vote either
in favor of or against the W . In this scenario, which is
illustrated in Figure 2, we have an initial state qs in which
all the congress members could use their votes in favour
or against the approval of W (no abstention or null vote
is allowed). In this example, W will be considered as the
state of affairs consisting of states q11, q12, and q13. This
multi-agent scenario can be modelled by the CGS M =
(N, Q, Act, d, o), where N = {1, ..., 11} (the first ten agents
are the voters in the congress followed by the president),
Q = {qs, q0, ..., q13}, Act = {0, 1, wait}, di(qs) = {0, 1}
for all i ∈ {1, ..., 10}, d11(qs) = {wait}, di(q) = {wait} for
all i ∈ {1, ..., 10} and q ∈ {q0, ..., q13}, d11(r) = {wait} for
r ∈ ({q0, q1, q2, q4, q6} ∪ {q8, ..., q13}), and d11(t) = {0, 1}
for t ∈ {q3, q5, q7}. The outcome function o is illustrated in
Figure 2 where for example o(qs, (1, 0, 0, ?)) = q4 in which
the war W will not take place because of the disapproval
of the congress (? represents any available action). For
notation convenience, actions of party members will be written
collectively in the action profiles, e.g., we write (0, 1, 0, ?)
to denote the action profile (0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ?).
Moreover, the simplifying assumption that all party members vote
collectively is implemented by o(qs, α¯0) = qs for all possible
action profiles α¯0 in which at least one party member acts
independently.</p>
      <p>
        The set of all weakly qs-responsible groups WqWs consists
of two groups of GR and D. These two are the minimal
groups with the preclusive power over W in qs. If an anti-war
campaign wants to negotiate and invest its limited resources in
order to avoid the war W , convincing any of groups in WqWs ,
can avoid the war. However, it is observable that convincing
the president is also adequate. Although the president has no
preclusive power in qs over W , there exist some accessible
states from qs (i.e., q3, q5, and q7), in which P is responsible
for the state of affairs. This potential capacity of P , will be
addressed by means of the introduced notion of functional
degree of responsibility. Two weakly qs-responsible groups GR
and D, have the functional degree of qs-responsibility of 1 for
W because they already have sufficient power to avoid W in
source state qs. Groups ∅, G, R, D, GD, RD, and GRD are
not (weakly) qs-responsible for W and no power acquisition
sequence exists for these groups. Accordingly, their functional
degree of qs-responsibility for W is 0. Groups P G, P R, P D,
P GR, P GD, P RD and P GRD, have the potentiality of
possessing the preclusive power in other states, i.e., q3, q5,
and q7, but none of them will be minimal group with preclusive
power over W . Note that minimality is a requirement for being
a (weakly) responsible group [
        <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref6">6</xref>
        ]. Hence, the functional degree
of qs-responsibility for all these groups will be 0. The group
which has a chance of becoming a (weakly) responsible group
in states other than qs (i.e., q3, q5, and q7) is P . In fact, the
President is the (unique) responsible group for W in states
q3, q5, and q7. As the minimum length of power acquisition
sequence for P is 1, the functional degree of qs-responsibility
of P for W is 1/2. Although, P has no independent action
profile to avoid W in qs, there exists a power acquisition
sequence for P through which P acquires the preclusive power
over W .
      </p>
      <p>The next proposition illustrates that through a shortest
power acquisition sequence, the potentiality that the group
is responsible for the state of affairs, increases strictly. This
potential reaches its highest possible value where the group
“really” has the preclusive power over the state of affairs as
a (weakly) responsible group. Note that there is a one-to-one
correspondence between any power acquisition sequence P =
hα¯1, ..., α¯ni in q for a group C for S and the sequence of states
hq1 = q, ..., qn+1i due to the deterministic nature of the action
profiles α¯i for 1 ≤ i ≤ n, i.e., o(qi, α¯i) = qi+1 and q = q1 and
q0 = qn+1 and C is (weakly) q0-responsible for S. Hence, in
the following, we write P = hq1, ..., qn+1i and interchangeably
use it instead of P = hα¯1, ..., α¯ni. Therefore, we simply refer
to any state qi as a state “in” the power acquisition sequence
P .</p>
      <p>Proposition 4 (Strictly increasing functionality). Let P =
hq1, ..., qn+1i (n ≥ 1) be a power acquisition sequence in
q = q1 for a group C for S. Then, for any tuple of states
(qi, qi+1), 1 ≤ i ≤ n, F DRqSi (C) &lt; F DRqi+1 (C) iff P is a
S
shortest power acquisition sequence in q for C for S.
)
1
,
q8 (?,?,?,0) ,,(???</p>
      <p>(1,1,1,?)
(1,0,0,?)
(0,1,1,?)</p>
      <p>α¯0
(0,0,1,?)(0, 0, 0, ?)
q3</p>
    </sec>
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