Measuring voting power: The paradox of new members vs the null player axiom

László Á. Kóczy ()

No 903, Working Paper Series from Budapest Tech, Keleti Faculty of Economics

Abstract: Qualified majority voting is used when decisions are made by voters of different sizes. In such situations the voters' influence on decision making is far from obvious; power measures are used for an indication of the decision making ability. Several power measures have been proposed and characterised by simple axioms to help the choice between them. Unfortunately the power measures also feature a number of so-called paradoxes of voting power. In this paper we show that the Paradox of New Members follows from the Null Player Axiom. As a corollary of this result it follows that there does not exist a power measure that satisfies the axiom, while not exhibiting the Paradox.

Keywords: a priori voting power; paradox of new members; null player axiom (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pkk:wpaper:0903

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