The Coleman–Shapley index: being decisive within the coalition of the interested

Abstract

The Coleman power of a collectivity to act (CPCA) is a popular statistic that reflects the ability of a committee to pass a proposal. Applying the Shapley value to that measure, we derive a new power index—the Coleman–Shapley index (CSI)—indicating each voter’s contribution to the CPCA. The CSI is characterized by four axioms: anonymity, the null voter property, the transfer property, and a property stipulating that the sum of the voters’ power equals the CPCA. Similar to the Shapley–Shubik index (SSI) and the Penrose–Banzhaf index (PBI), our new index reflects the expectation of being a pivotal voter. Here, the coalitional formation model underlying the CPCA and the PBI is combined with the ordering approach underlying the SSI. In contrast to the SSI, voters are ordered not according to their agreement with a potential bill, but according to their vested interest in it. Among the most interested voters, power is then measured in a way similar to the PBI. Although we advocate the CSI over the PBI so as to capture a voter’s influence on whether a proposal passes, our index gives new meaning to the PBI. The CSI is a decomposer of the PBI, splitting the PBI into a voter’s power as such and the voter’s impact on the power of the other voters by threatening to block any proposal. We apply our index to the EU Council and the UN Security Council.