In Defence of Voting Power Analysis: Responses to Albert

In: European Union politics: EUP, Band 4, Heft 4, S. 473-497

Abstract

Contributors to this forum respond to Max Albert's The Voting Power Approach: Measurement without Theory (2003) that argued against Lionel S. Penrose's theory (1946, 1952) of the measure of a priori voting power, based on the intuition of voting power as I-power. Dan S. Felsenthal & Moshe Machover respond to Albert's two significant arguments -- his argument that this theory is inapplicable to real-life situations & his rejection of the Principle of Insufficient Reason. Dennis Leech defends the voting power approach as a way of thinking about voting systems in terms of outcomes. Albert's criticisms are actually an attack on power indices, & his insistence that there is only one type of power index for all purposes is incorrect. Christian List presents an analogy with inequality indices to demonstrate why Albert's conclusion that they can be ignored is not in line with his diagnosis of the theoretical status of these indices. While power indices are a more recent addition to research, they deserve more time for their value to be proved. 1 Table, 41 References. L. A. Hoffman