Power, Voting, and Voting Power

Any normative theory of democracy involves notions of equity, which are supposed to guide collective decisions. On the other hand, a descriptive theory of any decision-making body must take into account the distribution of power in that body. The development of collective decision theory along two different paths reflects these two foci of interest in the theory of democracy. One direction can be subsumed under the theory of social choice, the other under the theory of games. In the theory of social choice, the participants are characterized only by their preferences among a set of alternatives (candidates, courses of action, etc. ). They do not choose among these alternatives. They only submit their preferences to some central authority ("the Society"), which then chooses among the alternatives in accordance with some fixed rule of aggregating the preferences. On the other hand, the point of departure in the theory of games is a set of actors, each of whom can choose between alternative courses of action (strategies). The totality of choices results in an outcome, which gener- ally has different utilities for the different actors. In this book, both approaches are presented in selected papers, from which the reader can get an excellent overview of the state of the art. Both branches of formal decision theory, the theory of social choice and the theory of games, were developed in mathematical language, but very little technical mathematical knowledge is required to follow the arguments.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction.- An Introduction to the Analysis of Power, Voting, and Voting Power.- 2. The Idea of Power.- Power in Game Forms.- A Philosophical View of Power.- Power and Profit in Hierarchical Organizations.- Equivalent Concepts of Power in Voting Games.- Attribution and Social Power.- Power: An Amorphous Term - Diverse Conceptual Approaches.- 3. Formal Analysis of Representation and Voting Procedures.- Proportional Representation and Effective Number of Parties in Finland.- The Relationship Between Voting and Party Strength in an Electoral System.- Manipulation of the Agenda by Strategic Voting: Separable and Nonseparable Preferences.- Order-of-Voting Effects.- Strategic Voting in Multicandidate Elections under Uncertainty and under Risk.- Electoral Rules and Rational Voting: The Effects of Candidate Viability Perceptions on Voting Decisions.- 4. Concepts of Power Measurement.- The Problem of the Right Distribution of Voting Power.- An Axiomated Family of Power Indices for Simple n-Person Games.- Measuring Power in Voting Bodies: Linear Constraints, Spatial Analysis, and a Computer Program.- Modification of the Banzhaf-Coleman Index for Games with A Priori Unions.- Power and Satisfaction in an Ideologically Divided Voting Body.- Power in an Ideological Space.- Measuring Power.- 5. The Empirical Approach.- Party Power and Government Formation: A Case Study.- The Distribution of Power in Specific Decision-Making Bodies.- Political Geography and Political Power.- Regional Power Allocation: The Problem of British Devolution.- The Paradox of Redistribution: Some Theoretical and Empirical Results.