Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Series: Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers
Creation-Date: 2019-08-26
Number: 19-062/II
Author-Name: Rene van den Brink
Author-Workplace-Name: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Author-Name: Dinko Dimitrov
Author-Workplace-Name: Saarland University
Author-Name: Agnieszka Rusinowska
Author-Workplace-Name: Paris School of Economics
Title: Winning Coalitions in Plurality Voting Democracies
Abstract: We study the issue of assigning weights to players that identify winning coalitions in plurality voting democracies. For this, we consider plurality games which are simple games in partition function form such that in every partition there is at least one winning coalition. Such a game is said to be precisely supportive if it is possible to assign weights to players in such a way that a coalition being winning in a partition implies that the combined weight of its members is maximal over all coalitions in the partition. A plurality game is decisive if in every partition there is exactly one winning coalition. We show that decisive plurality games with at most four players, majority games with an arbitrary number of players, and almost symmetric decisive plurality games with an arbitrary number of players are precisely supportive. Complete characterizations of a partition's winning coalitions are provided as well.
Classification-JEL: C71, D62, D72
Keywords: plurality game, plurality voting, precise support, simple game in partition function form, winning coalition
File-URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/19062.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 273922 bytes
Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20190062