A decisiveness index for simple games

Abstract

The decisiveness index introduced in this paper is designed to provide a normalized measure of the agility of all simple games, primarily viewed as collective decision-making mechanisms. We study the mathematical properties of the index and derive different axiomatic characterizations for it. Moreover, a close relationship is shown to the Banzhaf index of power––for which twice the decisiveness index plays the role of potential function––that gives rise to an effective computational procedure. Some real-world examples illustrate the usefulness of the decisiveness index, together with the Banzhaf power index, in applications to political science.