Abstract
The study of collective decisions is the study of power. In order to know what decisions are made it is first necessary to know who has the power to make and implement them. ‘Power’ is a common sense term that one intuitively feels refers to major political and social phenomena. Procedures for collective decision making are required because there is not a consensus in the collectivity. Somehow, the power of the contenders seems to determine the distribution of wins and losses. Perhaps because the term has such a general reference, students of the subject have produced definitions without clearly specifying the scope of the definitions’ applicability. The lack of communsurability of scope has made the comparison of the definitions difficult. Rather than banish the concept from scientific discourse7(as proposed by William Riker),1 this paper tries to clarify it by carefully defining the scope of this application and showing that, within that limited scope, application of several of the major definitions of power yields identical results.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
William Riker, ‘Some Ambiguities in the Notion of Power’, American Political Science Review 58 (1964), 341–349.
Donald Wittman ‘Various Concepts of Power’, Equivalence Among Ostensibly Unrelated Approaches’, British Journal of Political Science 6 (1977), 449–62.
Max Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, edited by Talcott Parsopns, Glencoe, Illinois, New Jersey Free Press, 1957, p. 152.
James March, ‘Measurement Concepts in the Theory of Influence’, Journal of Politics 19 (1957), 202–226
J. W. Thibau and H. H. Kelley, The Social Psychology of Groups, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1959.
George Karlsson, ‘Some Aspects of Power in Small Groups’, in Joan H. Caswell, Herbert Solomon and Patrick Suppes (eds.), Mathematical Methods of Small Group Processes, Stanford University Press, 1962, pp. 193–202.
L. S. Shapley, ‘A Value for N-person Games’, in H. W. Kuhn and A. W. Tucker (eds.), Contributions to the Theory of Games II, Annals of Mathematic Studies 28, Princeton University Press, 1953, New Jersey, pp. 307–317.
L. S. Shapley and Martin Shubik, ‘A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System’, The American Political Science Review 48 (1954), 787–792.
Irwin Mann and L. S. Shapley, ‘The A Priori Voting Strength of Electoral College,’ in Martin Shubik (ed.), Game Theory and Related Approaches to Social Behavior, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1964, pp. 151–164.
L. S. Shapley and William Riker, ‘Weighted Voting: A Mathematical Analysis for Instrumental Judgements’, J. Roland Pennock (ed.), Representation: Nomox X, New York, 1968, pp. 199–216.
James Coleman, The Mathematics of Collective Social Actions, Aldine Atherton Chicago, 1973. John Banzhaf, III ‘Weighted Voting Doesn’t Work’, Rutgers Law Review XIX (1965), 317–343.
J. Coleman, ‘The Marginal Utility of a Vote Commitment’, Public Choice (1968).
William Rikermm, Theory of Political Coalitions, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1962.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1978 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wittman, D. (1978). Power in Electoral Games. In: Hooker, C.A., Leach, J.J., McClennen, E.F. (eds) Foundations and Applications of Decision Theory. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 13b. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9792-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9792-9_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-009-9794-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9792-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive