Power, Freedom, and Voting

Description

Power, Freedom, and Voting is an interdisciplinary book that presents a comprehensive insight into current research by economists, mathematicians, philosophers and political scientists on three intimately related concepts that are at the heart of theories of democracy and social welfare. The editors have brought together some of the leading scholars in the different fields to create a distinctive volume. Chapters include contributions on foundational and methodological issues in the definition and measurement of power and freedom and empirical studies of power and coalition formation in voting bodies. The volume also contains contributions that make an effort to bridge the gaps between different disciplinary approaches, including one on the importance of Machiavelli’s writing as a reference point for modern political theory, and others on the related concepts of fairness and responsibility. A majority of the chapters make use of game theory. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Social Power and Social Causation: Towards a Formal Synthesis....Pages 1-21 Power Indices Methodology: Decisiveness, Pivots, and Swings....Pages 23-37 Further Reflections on the Expediency and Stability of Alliances....Pages 39-55 Positional Power in Hierarchies....Pages 57-81 A Public Help Index....Pages 83-98 Shapley-Shubik vs. Strategic Power: Live from the UN Security Council....Pages 99-117 Modified Power Indices for Indirect Voting....Pages 119-138 Pivotal Voting Theory: The 1993 Clinton Health Care Reform Proposal in the U.S. Congress....Pages 139-158 Coalition Formation Theories Revisited: An Empirical Investigation of Aumann’s Hypothesis....Pages 159-183 Coalition Formation, Agenda Selection, and Power....Pages 185-208 Democratic Defences and (De-)Stabilisations....Pages 209-226 The Instability of Power Sharing....Pages 227-243 The Power to Propose versus the Power to Oppose....Pages 245-258 Divergence in the Spatial Stochastic Model of Voting....Pages 259-287 Closeness Counts in Social Choice....Pages 289-306 Freedom, Coercion, and Ability....Pages 307-323 Guarantees in Game Forms....Pages 325-341 Individual Control in Decision-Making and Attitudes Towards Inequality: The Case of Italy....Pages 343-363 The Principle of Fairness: A Game Theoretic Model....Pages 365-383 Power, Productivity, and Profits....Pages 385-403 Trust, Responsibility, Power, and Social Capital....Pages 405-419 Exploiting The Prince ....Pages 421-438