The stability of decision making in committees: The one-core

Joseph Armel Momo Kenfack, Roland Pongou and Bertrand Tchantcho

Economics Letters, 2014, vol. 122, issue 3, 390-395

Abstract: We study the stability of decision making in committees. A policy proposal introduced by a committee member is either adopted or abandoned in favor of a new proposal after deliberations. If a proposal is abandoned, it is in spite of the committee member who introduced it, who does not cooperate in any effort to defeat it. Shenoy (1980) proposes the one-core as a solution concept for this game, and shows that this solution may be empty. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a stable policy under the majority rule. This result highlights a trade-off between the size of a committee, the number of competing policy options, and the existence of a stable outcome. Our findings imply a tension between political stability and the existence of a large number of competing interests in democracies.

Keywords: Voting; Group decisions; Committee games; Core; One-core (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176513005697
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:122:y:2014:i:3:p:390-395

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2013.12.030

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().