Shaping a Network Constituency: A PGI Analysis inspired by the City of Munich

This paper analyzes a network constituency which is characterized by voting in a political network. It applies power index analysis to the notorious Krackhardt’s kite social network by imposing a weighted voting game on the given network structure. It compares the results of this analysis, derived by applying the Public Good Index and the Public Value, with the outcome of employing the centrality concepts - degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality - that we find in Krackstadt (1990), and eigenvector centrality. Alternative collective decision rules and alternative network structure are considered. The study is concurs with a real-world collective decision problem which one of the authors experiences concerning a massive expansion of housebuilding with the City of Munich, the State of Bavaria and some German Federal Government institutions as possible players in a decision network. Other players are the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union, the farmers who are threatened by the expropriation of land and the incumbent inhabitants of the area who like their last resort of green fields and relatively fresh air, and already suffer from the heavy traffic in this area. The city’s housebuilding project is strongly contested.