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Can Power Be Reduced to a Quantitative Index – And If So, Which One? A Response to Garrett, McLean and Machover

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

R. J. Johnston
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Extract

Garrett, McLean and Machover's critique (see pp. 563–8) of my recent Note on the use of power indices to analyse the UK's stance on qualified majority voting in the expanded European Union Council of Ministers focuses on both my choice of power index and the validity of the use of any such indices.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 1995 , pp. 568 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Johnston, R. J., ‘The Conflict over Qualified Majority Voting in the European Union Council of Ministers: An Analysis of the UK Negotiating Stance Using Power Indices’, British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995), 245–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Garrett, , McLean, and Machover, , ‘Power, Power Indices and Blocking Power’, p. 563.Google Scholar

3 That referee was lain McLean, who waived possible anonymity. He stated that ‘I have some technical comments which should not be allowed to hold up publication’. I sent him a copy of the final version.

4 Johnston, , ‘The Conflict Over Qualified Majority Voting’, p. 249.Google Scholar

5 Garrett, , McLean, and Machover, , ‘Power, Power Indices and Blocking Power’, p. 563.Google Scholar

6 The original sources are: Banzhaf, J. F. III, ‘Weighted Voting Doesn't Work: A Mathematical Analysis’, Rutgers Law Review, 19 (1965), 317–43Google Scholar; Johnston, R. J., ‘On the Measurement of Power: Some Reactions to Laver’, Environment and Planning A, 10 (1978), 907–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Brams, S. J., Negotiation Games: Applying Game Theory to Bargaining and Arbitration (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 232–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Deegan, J. and Packel, E. W., ‘A New Index of Power for Simple n-Person Games’, International Journal of Game Theory, 7 (1979), 113–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 The ‘counter-intuitive’ finding, that (excluding Luxembourg) a country's power is inversely related to its size holds for the fifteen-member expanded EU, with the qualified majority voting (QMV) set at 23, 26 or 27.

10 Hosli, M. O., ‘Admission of European Free Trade Association States to the European Community: Effects on Voting Power in the European Community Council of Ministers’, International Organization, 47 (1993), 629–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 One possible exception to this would be the situation where one of the countries with 5 votes was only prepared to enter the coalition if another with 5 votes was as well, thus potentially increasing their joint voting power.

12 The three may combine, or any two may.

13 Shapley, L. S. and Shubik, M., ‘A Method of Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System’, American Political Science Review, 48 (1954), 787–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Brams, , Negotiation Games, p. 229.Google Scholar

15 The terminology is from Laver, M. and Schofield, N., Multiparty Government: The Politics of Coalition in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), chap. 3.Google Scholar

16 See Johnston, R. J., ‘Population Distributions and Electoral Power: Preliminary Investigations of Class Bias’, Regional Studies, 11 (1977), 309–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnston, R. J., ‘Political Geography and Political Power’, in Holler, M. J., ed., Power, Voting, and Voting Power (Wurzburg: Physica-Verlag, 1981), pp. 289–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Johnston, , ‘The Conflict over Qualified Majority Voting’, p. 253.Google Scholar