A Recursive Measure of Voting Power that Satisfies Reasonable Postulates

Abstract

We design a recursive measure of voting power based on partial as well as full voting efficacy. Classical measures, by contrast, incorporate solely full efficacy. We motivate our design by representing voting games using a division lattice and via the notion of random walks in stochastic processes, and show the viability of our recursive measure by proving it satisfies a plethora of postulates that any reasonable voting measure should satisfy. These include the iso-invariance, dummy, dominance, donation, minimum-power bloc, and quarrel postulates.