Bargaining in Committees of Representatives

Annick Laruelle () and Federico Valenciano ()

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2008, vol. 20, issue 1, 93-106

Abstract: Committees are often made up of representatives, each of them acting on behalf of a group of individuals or constituency of different size, who make decisions by means of a voting rule which specifies what vote configurations in the committee can pass a decision. This raises the question of the choice of an `adequate' (in a sense to be specified) voting rule, given the different sizes of the groups that members represent. In this article we take a new departure to address this problem, assuming that the committee is a bargaining scenario in which negotiations take place `in the shadow of the voting rule' in search of consensus. That is, a general agreement is sought, but any winning coalition can enforce an agreement. In this context, the notion of a `neutral' voting rule, based on the compromise between equitableness and efficiency (or egalitarianism and utilitarianism) represented by the Nash bargaining solution, is founded, yielding a recommendation that differs from previous ones.

Keywords: bargaining; committees; representation; voting rules (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:20:y:2008:i:1:p:93-106

DOI: 10.1177/0951629807084041

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