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Voting Power and Proportional Representation of Voters

Author

Listed:
  • Yair Tauman

    (Department of Economics, Stony Brook University)

  • Artyom Jelnov

    (The Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University, Israel)

Abstract

Our paper provides a justi cation for the proportional representative (PR) election system for politically diversi ed societies. We employ the Shapley value concept to measure the political power of parties in a parliament. We prove that for the PR system if parties' size add up to 1 and is uniformly distributed, the expected ratio of a party size to its political power converges to 1, and the variance decreases to 0 as the number of parties increases. The rate of convergence is high. An empirical evidence from the Netherlands elections supports our result. Using the Shapley-Owen index we obtain similar result (this time numerically only) for a voting model that takes into account ideological differences between parties and voters.

Suggested Citation

  • Yair Tauman & Artyom Jelnov, 2012. "Voting Power and Proportional Representation of Voters," Department of Economics Working Papers 12-04, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:nys:sunysb:12-04
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Boratyn, Daria & Kirsch, Werner & Słomczyński, Wojciech & Stolicki, Dariusz & Życzkowski, Karol, 2020. "Average weights and power in weighted voting games," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 90-99.
    2. Kurz, Sascha & Maaser, Nicola & Napel, Stefan, 2018. "Fair representation and a linear Shapley rule," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 152-161.
    3. Matteo Migheli, 2016. "Measuring Representativeness in Different Electoral Systems, Using Italian and Dutch Data," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 723-748, July.
    4. Xavier Molinero & Maria Serna & Marc Taberner-Ortiz, 2021. "On Weights and Quotas for Weighted Majority Voting Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-25, December.

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