IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/has/discpr/1315.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Electing the Pope

Author

Listed:
  • Laszlo A. Koczy

    (Momentum Game Theory Research Group, Institute of Economics Centre for Economic and Regional Studies)

  • Balazs Sziklai

    (Momentum Game Theory Research Group, Institute of Economics Centre for Economic and Regional Studies)

Abstract

Few elections attract so much attention as the Papal Conclave that elects the religious leader of over a billion Catholics worldwide. The Conclave is an interesting case of qualified majority voting with many participants and no formal voting blocks. Each cardinal is a well-known public gure with publicly available personal data and well-known positions on public matters. This provides excellent grounds for a study of spatial voting: In this brief note we study voting in the Papal Conclave after the resignation of Benedict XVI. We describe the method of the election and based on a simple estimation of certain factors that seem to influence the electors' preferences we calculate the power of each cardinal in the conclave as the Shapley-Shubik index of the corresponding voting game over a convex geometry.

Suggested Citation

  • Laszlo A. Koczy & Balazs Sziklai, 2013. "Electing the Pope," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1315, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:has:discpr:1315
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ.core.hu/file/download/mtdp/MTDP1315.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laszlo A. Koczy & Miklos Pinter, 2011. "The men who weren't even there: Legislative voting with absentees," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1129, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    2. Caplin, Andrew & Nalebuff, Barry, 1991. "Aggregation and Social Choice: A Mean Voter Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(1), pages 1-23, January.
    3. Edelman, Paul H., 1997. "A note on voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 37-50, August.
    4. Kóczy, László Á., 2012. "Beyond Lisbon: Demographic trends and voting power in the European Union Council of Ministers," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 152-158.
    5. 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. László Á. Kóczy, 2021. "Brexit and Power in the Council of the European Union," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-10, June.
    2. Andrew Mackenzie, 2020. "An axiomatic analysis of the papal conclave," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(3), pages 713-743, April.
    3. Imre Fertő & László Á Kóczy & Attila Kovács & Balázs R Sziklai, 0. "The power ranking of the members of the Agricultural Committee of the European Parliament," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 47(5), pages 1897-1919.
    4. Maxime Menuet, 2017. "Consensus-building in Electoral Competitions: Evidence from Papal Elections," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(4), pages 2826-2834.
    5. Mackenzie, Andrew, 2018. "A Game of the Throne of Saint Peter," Research Memorandum 015, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    6. László Á. Kóczy, 2018. "Partition Function Form Games," Theory and Decision Library C, Springer, number 978-3-319-69841-0, July.
    7. Kovacs, A. & Ferto, I. & Koczy, L. & Sziklai, B. & Nas, A.A., 2018. "Who has the critical vote? Power ranking of MEPs in the Agricultural Committee of the European Parliament," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277231, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    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, 2018. "Partition Function Form Games," Theory and Decision Library C, Springer, number 978-3-319-69841-0, July.
    2. 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.
    3. Imre Fertő & László Á Kóczy & Attila Kovács & Balázs R Sziklai, 0. "The power ranking of the members of the Agricultural Committee of the European Parliament," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 47(5), pages 1897-1919.
    4. repec:has:discpr:1611 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Jean Pierre TRANCHANT & Grégoire ROTA-GRAZIOSI & Léandre BASSOLE & Jean-Louis ARCAND, 2006. "The Making of a (vice-) President: Party Politics, Ethnicity, Village Loyalty and Community-Driven Development," Working Papers 200633, CERDI.
    9. Biró, Péter & Kóczy, László Á. & Sziklai, Balázs, 2015. "Fair apportionment in the view of the Venice Commission’s recommendation," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 32-41.
    10. Kóczy Á., László & Pintér, Miklós, 2011. "Az ellenzék ereje - általánosított súlyozott szavazási játékok [Minority power - generalized weighted voting games]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 543-551.
    11. Dóra Gréta Petróczy & Mark Francis Rogers & László Á. Kóczy, 2022. "Exits from the European Union and Their Effect on Power Distribution in the Council," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-25, February.
    12. Annick Laruelle, 1999. "- On The Choice Of A Power Index," Working Papers. Serie AD 1999-10, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    13. Serguei Kaniovski & Sreejith Das, 2015. "Measuring voting power in games with correlated votes using Bahadur’s parametrisation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(2), pages 349-367, February.
    14. László Á. Kóczy, 2016. "How Brexit affects European Union power distribution," Working Paper Series 1601, Óbuda University, Keleti Faculty of Business and Management.
    15. Badinger, Harald & Mühlböck, Monika & Nindl, Elisabeth & Reuter, Wolf Heinrich, 2014. "Theoretical vs. empirical power indices: Do preferences matter?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 158-176.
    16. D'ora Gr'eta Petr'oczy & Mark Francis Rogers & L'aszl'o 'A. K'oczy, 2018. "Brexit: The Belated Threat," Papers 1808.05142, arXiv.org.
    17. 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.
    18. László Á. Kóczy, 2021. "Brexit and Power in the Council of the European Union," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-10, June.
    19. Jochen Staudacher & Felix Wagner & Jan Filipp, 2021. "Dynamic Programming for Computing Power Indices for Weighted Voting Games with Precoalitions," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-17, December.
    20. Ismaël Mourifié & Marc Henry & Romuald Méango, 2020. "Sharp Bounds and Testability of a Roy Model of STEM Major Choices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(8), pages 3220-3283.
    21. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10284 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Le Breton, Michel & Lepelley, Dominique & Smaoui, Hatem, 2012. "The Probability of Casting a Decisive Vote: From IC to IAC trhough Ehrhart's Polynomials and Strong Mixing," IDEI Working Papers 722, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Papal Conclave; game over convexge-ometry; Shapley-Shubik index;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:has:discpr:1315. 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: Nora Horvath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iehashu.html .

    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.