IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v7y1995i1p41-63.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Paradox of Coalition Trading

Author

Listed:
  • Josep M. Colomer
  • Florencio Martínez

Abstract

We present a model of coalition formation in a multiparty and multiparliament system in which several parties can agree on simultaneously exchanging their votes in a set of parliaments. Given this possibility, a party, acting rationally in its own self-interest, could accept sharing oversized majority coalitions in some parliaments with numerically superfluous partners. We present a formal argument in instances with diverse numbers of parties and parliaments. We propose a newly invented and refined parliamentary power index in order to measure and compare the benefits of different coalition strategies. We also present empirical evidence of situations prone and adverse to this paradoxical but rationally self-interested behaviour by parties acting in local parliaments in Spain.

Suggested Citation

  • Josep M. Colomer & Florencio Martínez, 1995. "The Paradox of Coalition Trading," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 7(1), pages 41-63, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:7:y:1995:i:1:p:41-63
    DOI: 10.1177/0951692895007001003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692895007001003
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951692895007001003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Riker, William H. & Brams, Steven J., 1973. "The Paradox of Vote Trading," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 1235-1247, December.
    2. R J Johnston, 1978. "On the Measurement of Power: Some Reactions to Laver," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 10(8), pages 907-914, August.
    3. Taylor, Michael, 1972. "On The Theory of Government Coalition Formation," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(3), pages 361-373, July.
    4. James Enelow, 1986. "The stability of logrolling: An expectations approach," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 285-294, January.
    5. Leiserson, Michael, 1968. "Factions and Coalitions in One-Party Japan: An Interpretation Based on the Theory of Games," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(3), pages 770-787, September.
    6. Browne, Eric C. & Franklin, Mark N., 1973. "Aspects of Coalition Payoffs in European Parliamentary Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(2), pages 453-469, June.
    7. Shapley, L. S. & Shubik, Martin, 1954. "A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(3), pages 787-792, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fabien Lange & László Kóczy, 2013. "Power indices expressed in terms of minimal winning coalitions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(2), pages 281-292, July.
    2. Julien Reynaud & Fabien Lange & Łukasz Gątarek & Christian Thimann, 2011. "Proximity in Coalition Building," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 3(3), pages 111-132, September.
    3. Thimann, Christian & Reynaud, Julien & Gatarek, Lukasz, 2007. "Proximity and linkages among coalition participants: a new voting power measure applied to the International Monetary Fund," Working Paper Series 819, European Central Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. László Á. Kóczy, 2016. "Power Indices When Players can Commit to Reject Coalitions," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 77-91, August.
    2. Borkowski, Agnieszka, 2003. "Machtverteilung Im Ministerrat Nach Dem Vertrag Von Nizza Und Den Konventsvorschlagen In Einer Erweiterten Europaischen Union," IAMO Discussion Papers 14887, Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    3. Carreras, Francesc, 2005. "A decisiveness index for simple games," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 163(2), pages 370-387, June.
    4. Leech, Dennis, 2002. "The Use of Coleman's Power Indices to Inform the Choice of Voting Rule with Reference to the IMF Governing Body and the EU Council of Ministers," Economic Research Papers 269458, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    5. Michel Grabisch & Agnieszka Rusinowska, 2007. "Influence Indices," Post-Print halshs-00142479, HAL.
    6. Julien Reynaud & Fabien Lange & Łukasz Gątarek & Christian Thimann, 2011. "Proximity in Coalition Building," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 3(3), pages 111-132, September.
    7. Bhattacherjee, Sanjay & Chakravarty, Satya R. & Sarkar, Palash, 2022. "A General Model for Multi-Parameter Weighted Voting Games," MPRA Paper 115407, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. repec:wut:journl:v:3-4:y:2011:id:1012 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Barua, Rana & Chakravarty, Satya R. & Roy, Sonali & Sarkar, Palash, 2004. "A characterization and some properties of the Banzhaf-Coleman-Dubey-Shapley sensitivity index," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 31-48, October.
    10. Annick Laruelle & Federico Valenciano, 2005. "A critical reappraisal of some voting power paradoxes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 125(1), pages 17-41, July.
    11. Masanori Mitsutsune & Takanori Adachi, 2014. "Estimating noncooperative and cooperative models of bargaining: an empirical comparison," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 669-693, September.
    12. Josep Freixas & Montserrat Pons, 2017. "Using the Multilinear Extension to Study Some Probabilistic Power Indices," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 437-452, May.
    13. Michel Grabisch & Agnieszka Rusinowska, 2009. "Measuring influence in command games," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 33(2), pages 177-209, August.
    14. Freixas, Josep & Marciniak, Dorota & Pons, Montserrat, 2012. "On the ordinal equivalence of the Johnston, Banzhaf and Shapley power indices," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 216(2), pages 367-375.
    15. Fabien Lange & László Kóczy, 2013. "Power indices expressed in terms of minimal winning coalitions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 41(2), pages 281-292, July.
    16. Berghammer, Rudolf & Bolus, Stefan & Rusinowska, Agnieszka & de Swart, Harrie, 2011. "A relation-algebraic approach to simple games," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(1), pages 68-80, April.
    17. Michel Grabisch & Agnieszka Rusinowska, 2010. "A model of influence in a social network," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(1), pages 69-96, July.
    18. Marek Loužek, 2004. "Indikátory hlasovací síly v Evropské unii [Voting power indicators in the European union]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2004(3), pages 291-312.
    19. Somdeb Lahiri, 2021. "Pattanaik's axioms and the existence of winners preferred with probability at least half," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 31(2), pages 109-122.
    20. Dan S. Felsenthal & Moshé Machover, 2015. "The measurement of a priori voting power," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 8, pages 117-139, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    21. Pavel Konyukhovskiy & Victoria Holodkova & Aleksander Titov, 2019. "Modeling Competition between Countries in the Development of Arctic Resources," Resources, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:7:y:1995:i:1:p:41-63. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.