CeDEx workshop - Stefan Napel (University of Bayreuth)

On the Democratic Weights of Nations

Abstract:  Which voting weights ought to be allocated to single delegates of differently sized groups from a democratic fairness perspective? We operationalize the ‘one person, one vote’ principle by demanding every individual’s influence on collective decisions to be equal a priori. The analysis concerns intervals of alternatives. Weights should be proportional to the square root of constituency sizes if preferences are drawn independently from the same distribution for all agents. A Shapley value-based variation of simple proportionality to size becomes optimal if voters are polarized along constituency lines.

Keywords: collective choice; institutional design; equal representation; Shapley value; pivot probability; random order values