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LLM Constitutional Multi-Agent Governance

Authors: J. de CurtΓ², I. de ZarzΓ 

Published: 2026-03-13

arXiv ID: 2603.13189v1

Added to Library: 2026-03-16 03:00 UTC

Risk & Governance

πŸ“„ Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate persuasive influence strategies that shift cooperative behavior in multi-agent populations, but a critical question remains: does the resulting cooperation reflect genuine prosocial alignment, or does it mask erosion of agent autonomy, epistemic integrity, and distributional fairness? We introduce Constitutional Multi-Agent Governance (CMAG), a two-stage framework that interposes between an LLM policy compiler and a networked agent population, combining hard constraint filtering with soft penalized-utility optimization that balances cooperation potential against manipulation risk and autonomy pressure. We propose the Ethical Cooperation Score (ECS), a multiplicative composite of cooperation, autonomy, integrity, and fairness that penalizes cooperation achieved through manipulative means. In experiments on scale-free networks of 80 agents under adversarial conditions (70% violating candidates), we benchmark three regimes: full CMAG, naive filtering, and unconstrained optimization. While unconstrained optimization achieves the highest raw cooperation (0.873), it yields the lowest ECS (0.645) due to severe autonomy erosion (0.867) and fairness degradation (0.888). CMAG attains an ECS of 0.741, a 14.9% improvement, while preserving autonomy at 0.985 and integrity at 0.995, with only modest cooperation reduction to 0.770. The naive ablation (ECS = 0.733) confirms that hard constraints alone are insufficient. Pareto analysis shows CMAG dominates the cooperation-autonomy trade-off space, and governance reduces hub-periphery exposure disparities by over 60%. These findings establish that cooperation is not inherently desirable without governance: constitutional constraints are necessary to ensure that LLM-mediated influence produces ethically stable outcomes rather than manipulative equilibria.

πŸ” Key Points

  • Introduction of Constitutional Multi-Agent Governance (CMAG) framework that combines hard constraint filtering and soft penalized-utility optimization to enhance cooperative behavior in multi-agent settings mediated by Large Language Models (LLMs).
  • Development of the Ethical Cooperation Score (ECS), a composite metric that evaluates cooperation while considering autonomy, epistemic integrity, and fairness, ensuring that cooperation achieved through manipulative means is penalized.
  • Empirical results demonstrate that CMAG significantly improves ethical cooperation compared to naive filtering and unconstrained optimization, achieving a 14.9% increase in ECS while maintaining high levels of autonomy and integrity.
  • Demonstration that cooperation without governance mechanisms can lead to manipulative equilibria with undesirable ethical outcomes, highlighting the necessity of governance structures in reinforcing genuine prosocial behavior among agents.

πŸ’‘ Why This Paper Matters

The CMAG framework offers a novel approach to ensure ethically sound cooperative behavior in systems utilizing Large Language Models, revealing that ethical outcomes are not guaranteed by mere increases in cooperation but require deliberate governance. This work is crucial in the context of deploying AI in multi-agent environments, emphasizing the importance of ethical considerations in AI governance.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

This paper is of high relevance to AI security researchers as it addresses the manipulation of cooperative behavior through LLMs, highlighting the risks of adversarial influence and unethical agent behavior. The findings underscore the importance of implementing robust governance frameworks to prevent harmful outcomes in AI systems, aligning well with the core concerns of AI safety and alignment.

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