Affiliation:
1. Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences (II), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Abstract
Shapley and Shubik in 1954 proposed an index to measure the relative voting power of members of a decision-making body, given their weights in the said body. In this article, we have tried to investigate whether one can ensure equal voting power for all the citizens in a democracy through their respective representatives in the state legislature. The article shows that if the citizens realise their voting power through legislators and the number of constituencies in a democracy are at most four, then there does not exist any weighted voting rule such that the citizens enjoy equal voting power. JEL: C71, D71, D72
Subject
General Economics, Econometrics and Finance