Annick Laruelle and Federico Valenciano: Voting and collective decision-making

Abstract

The book 'Voting and Collective Decision Making' by A. Laruelle and F. Valenciano provides a critical revision of the theoretical foundations of collective yes-or-no decisions. It is a study of the theory of bargaining and voting power, revolving around a fundamental question: given a committee, what voting rule should be used? Brief summary of the book and motivation of researchIn a nutshell, the theory and measurement of voting power revolves around the question to what extent a voter is able to control the outcome of a vote. This question is fundamental as it provides the foundation to the question of what voting procedure should be used for a decision-making body when we deal with criteria such as, e.g. egalitarianism. As an example take the European Union where the decision-making processes of the EU institutions should be ideally designed-from an egalitarian point of view-such that every EU citizen has equal voting power. Especially, the several enlargements of the EU have led to a renewal of interest in this topic and heated debates in the scientific community along with controversial academic papers.The main purpose of Voting and Collective Decision Making by A. Laruelle and F. Valenciano (L&V) is to provide a critical revision of the theoretical foundations of collective yes-or-no decisions as well as a revision of the recommendations when it comes to the design of decision-making procedures. The focus of their approach is to include not only the voting rule 1 as unique ingredient but to draw a clear 1 L&V define a voting rule as a monotonic and proper simple game. In other words, it is a set of winning coalitions which contains the grand coalition and all supersets of winning coalitions. It does not contain the empty set or the complement of a winning coalition (see their Definition 1, p. 5). I. Lindner (B)