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Voting Power Derives from the Poll Distribution: Shedding Light on Contentious Issues of Weighted Votes and the Constitutional Treaty. ENEPRI Working Paper, No. 50, 6 February 2007

Paterson, Iain. (2007) Voting Power Derives from the Poll Distribution: Shedding Light on Contentious Issues of Weighted Votes and the Constitutional Treaty. ENEPRI Working Paper, No. 50, 6 February 2007. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    Analysis of the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union shows that there is a serious discrepancy between the voting power gradient of Member States computed by the Shapley- Shubik and Banzhaf indices. Given the lack of compelling arguments to choose between these indices on purely axiomatic grounds, we turn to a probabilistic approach as pioneered by Straffin (1977) focusing on the probability distribution of voting poll outcomes. We present a unifying model of power indices as expected decisiveness, which shows that the defining feature of each approach is a particular distribution of the voting poll. Empirical evidence drawn from voting situations, in addition to a consideration of first principles, leads us to reject one of these approaches. The unified formulation allows us to develop useful related concepts of efficiency and blocking leverage, previously used solely by a 'Banzhaf' approach, for the case of Shapley-Shubik, and a comparison of results is shown.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Uncontrolled Keywords: Voting power indices; power gradient; coefficient of representation; expected decisiveness; blocking leverage; C efficiency, blocking leverage.
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > Treaty reform > Constitution for Europe
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > European elections/voting behavior
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels) > ENEPRI Working Papers
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 27 Jan 2008
    Page Range: p. 32
    Last Modified: 06 Apr 2012 13:06
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/7394

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