IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/3885.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why one would accept Voting Theory for Democracy and reject the Penrose Square Root Weights

Author

Listed:
  • Colignatus, Thomas

Abstract

Various scientists under the label of “Scientists for a democratic Europe” (SDE) sent a joint “Letter to the governments of the EU member states” (2007) advising the use of the Penrose Square Root Weights (PSRW) for the EU Council of Ministers. When we compare the SDE letter with Colignatus (2001, 2007b) “Voting theory for democracy” (VTFD) then we find that SDE does not fit voting theory for democracy. Inspection of the material upon which the SDE letter is based also shows a moral choice while the rigorous empirical analysis by Gelman, Katz and Bafumi (2007) is actually misrepresented. So the SDE letter can also be rejected on its own grounds. The PSRW approach seems not valid for (indivisible) individuals but may be applicable for divisible shares in shareholder meetings.

Suggested Citation

  • Colignatus, Thomas, 2007. "Why one would accept Voting Theory for Democracy and reject the Penrose Square Root Weights," MPRA Paper 3885, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Jul 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:3885
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/3885/1/MPRA_paper_3885.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Colignatus, 2005. "Announcement of availability: "Definition & Reality in the General Theory of Political Economy" 2nd edition 2005," General Economics and Teaching 0502072, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Colignatus, Thomas, 2007. "In a democracy, Bayrou would have won. Application of the Borda Fixed Point method to the 2007 French presidential elections," MPRA Paper 3170, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Leech, Dennis, 2002. "Designing the Voting System for the Council of the European Union," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 113(3-4), pages 437-464, December.
    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. Colignatus, Thomas, 2010. "Single vote multiple seats elections. Didactics of district versus proportional representation, using the examples of the United Kingdom and The Netherlands," MPRA Paper 22671, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Jul 2007.

    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. Matthew Gould & Matthew D. Rablen, 2013. "Equitable Representation in the Councils of the United Nations: Theory and Application," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 13-07, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    2. Le Breton, Michel & Montero, Maria & Zaporozhets, Vera, 2012. "Voting power in the EU council of ministers and fair decision making in distributive politics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 159-173.
    3. Seppo Honkapohja & Frank Westermann, 2009. "Rethinking Subsidiarity in the EU: Economic Principles," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Seppo Honkapohja & Frank Westermann (ed.), Designing the European Model, chapter 10, pages 331-365, Palgrave Macmillan.
    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. 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. Jonathan R. Strand & Kenneth J. Retzl, 2016. "Did Recent Voice Reforms Improve Good Governance within the World Bank?," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(3), pages 415-445, May.
    7. Le Breton, Michel & Lepelley, Dominique & Macé, Antonin & Merlin, Vincent, 2017. "Le mécanisme optimal de vote au sein du conseil des représentants d’un système fédéral," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 93(1-2), pages 203-248, Mars-Juin.
    8. Fabrice Barthelemy & Mathieu Martin, 2011. "A Comparison Between the Methods of Apportionment Using Power Indices: the Case of the US Presidential Elections," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 101-102, pages 87-106.
    9. Paul Schure & Amy Verdun, 2008. "Legislative Bargaining in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 9(4), pages 459-486, December.
    10. Leech, Dennis & Aziz, Haris, 2007. "The Double Majority Voting Rule of the EU Reform Treaty as a Democratic Ideal for an Enlarging Union : an Appraisal Using Voting Power Analysis," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 824, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    11. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2006. "The Inter-Institutional Distribution of Power in EU Codecision," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 27(1), pages 129-154, August.
    12. Widgrén, Mika, 2008. "The Impact of Council Voting Rules on EU Decision-Making," Discussion Papers 1162, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    13. Madeleine Hosli & Rebecca Moody & Bryan O’Donovan & Serguei Kaniovski & Anna Little, 2011. "Squaring the circle? Collective and distributive effects of United Nations Security Council reform," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 163-187, July.
    14. Widgren, Mika & Kauppi, Heikki, 2008. "Do Benevolent Aspects Have Room in Explaining EU Budget Receipts?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6778, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Mika Widgren, 2003. "Power in the Design of Constitutional Rules," European Economy Group Working Papers 23, European Economy Group.
    16. Leech, Dennis, 2002. "Computation Of Power Indices," Economic Research Papers 269457, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    17. Madeleine O. Hosli & Běla Plechanovová & Serguei Kaniovski, 2018. "Vote Probabilities, Thresholds and Actor Preferences: Decision Capacity and the Council of the European Union," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 31-52, June.
    18. Diana Cheng & Peter Coughlin, 2017. "Using equations from power indices to analyze figure skating teams," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 170(3), pages 231-251, March.
    19. Kóczy Á., László, 2011. "Lisszaboni kilátások [Lisbon prospects]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(12), pages 1045-1058.
    20. Zeitlin, Jonathan, 2005. "Social Europe and Experimentalist Governance: Towards a New Constitutional Compromise?," European Governance Papers (EUROGOV) 4, CONNEX and EUROGOV networks.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    voting theory; voting systems; elections; public choice; political economy; Borda Fixed Point; democracy; European Union; Penrose square root weights;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • A2 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics
    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:3885. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.