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Electing the Pope

Author

Listed:
  • László Á. Kóczy

    (Óbuda University)

  • Balázs Sziklai

    (Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

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 qualied majority voting with many participants and no formal voting blocks. Each cardinal is a well-known public figure 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

  • László Á. Kóczy & Balázs Sziklai, 2013. "Electing the Pope," Working Paper Series 1301, Óbuda University, Keleti Faculty of Business and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:pkk:wpaper:1301
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caplin, Andrew & Nalebuff, Barry, 1991. "Aggregation and Social Choice: A Mean Voter Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(1), pages 1-23, January.
    2. 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.
    3. László Á. Kóczy & Miklós Pintér, 2011. "The men who weren't even there: Legislative voting with absentees," Working Paper Series 1104, Óbuda University, Keleti Faculty of Business and Management.
    4. Edelman, Paul H., 1997. "A note on voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 37-50, August.
    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)

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    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. 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.
    3. László Á. Kóczy, 2018. "Partition Function Form Games," Theory and Decision Library C, Springer, number 978-3-319-69841-0, March.
    4. 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.
    5. Maxime Menuet, 2017. "Consensus-building in Electoral Competitions: Evidence from Papal Elections," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(4), pages 2826-2834.
    6. Mackenzie, Andrew, 2018. "A Game of the Throne of Saint Peter," Research Memorandum 015, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    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.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Papal Conclave; game over convex geometry; Shapley-Shubik index JEL Codes: C71; C72;
    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

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