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When two factions clash within a committee, a company, or a country, a natural question to ask is: Why don't they share power or responsibilities and try to reach a compromise that, while leaving neither faction in control, at least leaves neither too aggrieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a wide range of political systems, decision making requires the support of a majority. When majorities are backed by coalitions, then they are organized either for a given period of time or on a case by case basis (i.e. for single proposals). In Germany, for instance, minority governments are rare and the first case prevails. In any case, there may be a unique party that is entitled to form a coalition (called formateur), or any party may be entitled to do so. We are interested in the non-cooperative treatment of a formateur model, and based on this, we want to discuss bargaining power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In one of the earliest attempts to examine the effect of a priori voting power on actual political phenomena, Riker (1959) looked at changes in party affiliation in the French National Assembly in 1953-54, and used these data to test the hypothesis that deputies who switched parties were seeking thereby to increase their a priori voting power. His findings were negative, or at best inconclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Did Pope Alexander VI exploit his son Cesare Borgia to extend the papal state and finally convert it into a Borgia state? Cesare Borgia became Machiavelli's model of the political character labelled ‘The Prince' and he is the hero of his booklet Il Principe (The Prince) which contains Machiavelli's vision on how to unite his beloved Italy and to bring peace and the rule of law to it. Cesare's papal father, however, was given a rather negative evaluation by Machiavelli, whom he accused of using ‘old religious customs' to do ‘nothing else but deceive men ... no man was ever more able to give assurance, or affirmed things with strong oaths, and no man observed them less; however, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he well knew this aspects of things' (Prince, 93 M). Of course, Cesare Borgia also exploited his position as a papal son in order to create support for his military expeditions and political feuds. This became obvious with the early death of his papal father and the reign of Julius II.1 In the end, Cesare was arrested and brought to Spain, the native country of his family, where he died in an ambush at the age of thirty-two fighting for his brother-in-law Juan de Albret, King of Navarra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses trust as a form of social capital, that is, as a social resource which works as a facilitating condition of successful action coordination and social cooperation. It also discusses responsibility as a special source of trust. Coleman (1988) defines social capital in terms of its function of which, roughly, the following features are required: it is a property of a social structure which helps its individual or collective members' successful action, that is, the function which is called social capital makes it easier for those actors to reach their goals (Putnam 1995). Fukuyama (1999) says that social capital is ‘an instantiated informal norm that promotes cooperation'. He does not mention social structure as Coleman does, and Coleman does not mention cooperation as Fukuyama does. These two defi- nitions may aim at a common idea, but their details disagree radically. Some social capital theorists talk about trust as a factor which exemplifies social capital, but if we believe in Coleman's structural definition, it may be dif- ficult to see how the most demanding forms of trust fit in. Fukuyama explicitly allows for trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A change in workplace technologies may affect the relative earnings of workers in at least two distinct ways. One is through the market for skill, the other through workers' power in relation to their employers. Increases in earnings inequality since the late 1970s in many industrial economies — and in particular, in liberal market economies like the US and UK — have been explained by many economists as a consequence of skill-biased technological change (SBTC). However, the evidence cited for SBTC can be read instead as evidence that new technologies affect the distribution of earnings not through supply and demand, but through changes in the relative power of different groups of employees. The reasons for these changes are detailed in Guy (2003) and the implications are analyzed more formally by Guy and Skott (2005) and Skott and Guy (2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of international agreements aimed at environmental protection offers a mix of successes and failures, with the latter being far more frequent than the former. The best known example is the Kyoto protocol: a treatise signed by over 160 countries to reduce emissions of gasses held responsible for green-house effect. This agreement is usually considered to be a half failure, mostly because of the decision of the United States not to ratify it (Pizer 2006: 26). Other international treatises faced similar problems. For example, the Helsinki treaty for the reduction of emissions responsible for acid rains, signed in 1985 by a group of European and American countries, failed to be ratified by United States and United Kingdom (Barrett 2005). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power is commonly defined as the control exercised by one or more persons over the choices, behaviours and attitudes of another or others. In this paper we focus on a different form of control, i.e., the control that a person exercises on her own choices, behaviours and attitudes. We conceptualize this different form of control by using the Millian idea of autonomy freedom. We argue that the power required for an individual to be in control of her own actions is exercised through her level of autonomy freedom. Autonomy freedom is, therefore, instrumental for an individual to have self-control over her own life. We claim that the extent of autonomy freedom significantly affects an individual's attitudes toward income inequality. More specifically, we point out, and empirically demonstrate, that individuals who enjoy high levels of autonomy freedom value income differences more than those whose degree of autonomy freedom is low [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of freedom, liberty, rights, and power are often extremely confusing and in fact confused because they take place in a conceptual mine- field. This paper does not claim to solve any of the deeper riddles of such discussions. Instead of this it tries to side step some of the most problematic and difficult issues by confining itself to publicly or politically provided ‘guarantees'. This seems reasonable since disputes about many legal and social policy issues related to freedom, liberty, rights, and power centre around such provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his methodological comments about the study of ethics and politics, Aristotle famously remarked that one should not demand more precision from the study of a subject than that subject allows.1 He has sometimes been interpreted as suggesting that analytical rigour is not required here. Indeed it may well be true that at the end of analytical scrutiny, central topics in moral and political philosophy, such as freedom or power, may still leave room for interpretation because the superiority of one analysis over another may well be embedded in our intuitions. This fact, if it proves to be so, should not dissuade us from analytical rigour. In the last few decades philosophers, economists and mathematicians have fruitfully applied mathematical and formal analysis to the concepts of ‘power' and ‘freedom'. From that analysis we have learned much. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A working democratic system of government is based on voting and elections. A glance at the literature reveals an astonishing variety of systems used for electing persons to political offices, for choosing policy alternatives and for enacting legislation. While it is undoubtedly true that voting is just a necessary condition for democracy, it is remarkable how many and how different systems are used for apparently the same purpose, viz. to find out the ‘will of the people'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has been devoted over the last few decades in an attempt at constructing formal models of political choice in electoral systems based on proportional representation (PR). In large degree these models have been most successful in studying the post-election phase of coalition bargaining (Laver and Schofield 1990; Laver and Shepsle 1996; Banks and Duggan 2000). Such models can take the locations and strengths of the parties as given. Attempts at modelling the electoral phase have met with limited success, since they have usually assumed that the policy space is restricted to one dimension, or that there are at most two parties. The extensive formal literature on two party electoral competition was typically based on the assumption that parties or candidates adopted positions in order to win (Calvert 1985.) In PR systems it is unlikely that a single party can gain enough votes to win outright (Cox 1990, 1997; Strom 1990). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we compare proposal power to veto power within the context of a majority-rule voting system, such as a legislature. To illustrate the issues involved, consider the following scenario: P can propose a bill, which is then enacted if a majority (M) of legislators vote in favour of the bill and V (for veto player) agrees to its passage. P could stand for the committee system in the US House of Representatives, where a committee brings a bill to the floor of the house. V would then stand for the president who can veto a bill.1 And even if the President does not veto the bill, the Supreme Court might find the bill unconstitutional. So the Supreme Court can be seen as a veto player, as well. When does the proposer have more power than the veto player? More generally, what is the outcome if there are several proposers and/or veto players? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of lobbying differ considerably about which legislators are most likely to be lobbied by which types of interest groups. In particular, there is not agreement as to whether lobbyists will focus on those likely to be sympathetic to the interest group (their friends), or those likely to be unsympathetic to the interest group (their enemies).1 Plausible arguments can be made in each direction. One lobbies one's friends to offer information that will help them draft legislation and fend off criticism, and to remind them of past obligations and future payoffs (carrots); one lobbies one's enemies because they need to be exposed to arguments and facts countervailing their most likely position, and to alert them that this is an important vote that will be remembered and might cost them the opposition of an interest group in future re-election efforts (sticks). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An impressive list of economists, political scientists, and philosophers starting with Thomas Hobbes and including Herbert Simon (1957), James March (1955), Robert Dahl (1957, 1968), Felix Oppenheim (1961, 1976, 1981), William Riker (1964), Virginia Held (1972), and Jack Nagel (1975) have claimed that there are key and compelling similarities between what is ordinarily considered to be an ascription of social power and that which is considered under the more general rubric of causality. Hence to say: ‘i has (had) power to x', is to assert that i can (did) cause an outcome x.‘i has (had) power over j' , is to assert that i can (did) cause j to act in a specific way (in a manner that he would not otherwise do). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Once the invention of the state is made, the question of controlling it arises.2 Taking recourse to controllers the ancient problem of controlling those who are in control emerges: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' (who will guard the guardians?). As far as this is concerned democratic self-rule has been and is often still regarded as a way out: self-control seems to eliminate the need for control and thereby the need for controllers. But taking a closer look most of us will agree with John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, chap. 1): The ‘people' who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the ‘self-government' spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and in political speculations ‘the tyranny of the majority' is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Security Council is the dominant political organ of the United Nations (UN). It is in charge of deciding upon the ‘effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace ...' which are mentioned by the Charter of the United Nations after defining the UN's prime purpose: ‘to maintain international peace and security' (Art. 1(1)). The Security Council consists of 15 members altogether. Britain, China, France, Russia, and the US are permanent members, i.e. belong to the Council at any point in time. The remaining ten seats are filled by non-permanent members that, at the time of writing, were: Argentina, Congo, Denmark, Ghana, Greece, Japan, Peru, Qatar, Slovakia, and Tanzania. They are elected by the UN General Assembly according to regional quotas for a term of two years, with five members replaced each year, and no possibility of a direct re-election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Electoral College remains a controversial feature of U.S. political decision-making. After most U.S. presidential elections, there are calls for passage of a constitutional amendment to either abolish it or to ‘reform' it substantially. There are numerous complaints about the Electoral College, of which the most important is the potential for the winner of the Electoral College majority to be a popular vote loser. Consider three assertions that often surface in the debates about the political impact of the Electoral College. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As far as we known, the first concept of power index dates back to 1780s and is due to Luther Martin (see Felsenthal and Machover (2005), Gambarelli and Owen (2004) and Riker (1986)). Lionel S. Penrose (1946) gave, probably, the first scientific discussion of voting power where he introduced the concept of a priori voting power (a similar analysis was independently carried out by John F. Banzhaf (1965)). Lloyd S. Shapley, in cooperation with Martin Shubik (Shapley and Shubik 1954), came up with a specialization of the Shapley (1953) value as a power index. Other power indices were introduced later; some derived from existing values, others built exclusively for simple games. The Public Good Index introduced by Manfred Holler in (1978) belongs to the latter category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power is a core concept for the analysis and design of organisations. The literature contains a wide variety of contributions from various disciplines dealing with different types and aspects of power in organisations. These can broadly be classified by a combination of two features: the subject of the analysis and its primary origin (Morriss 1987/2002: 107f). The subject is either the possession of power or its exercise and its primary origin is either an individual or a position in an organisation. That is, power is taken to be rooted in an individual or a position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the formation and dissolution of alliances of voters aiming to increase their voting power is relatively new. The present note is a sequel to our earlier paper on this subject (see Felsenthal and Machover 2002). Since the latter's publication, we have obtained some new results which can be viewed also as a complement to some of the results obtained by Gelman (2003). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three most frequently used measures of a priori voting power of members of a committee were proposed by Shapley and Shubik (1954), Penrose (1946) and Banzhaf (1965), and Holler and Packel (1983). We shall refer to them also as SS-power index, PB-power index and HP-power index. There exist also some other well defined power indices, such as Johnston index (1978) and Deegan-Packel index (1979).1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a field theory has a symmetry, global or local like in gauge theories, in the tree or classical approximation formal manipulations lead to believe that the symmetry can also be implemented in the full quantum theory, provided one uses the proper quantization rules. While this is often true, it is not a general property and, therefore, requires a proof because simple formal manipulations ignore the unavoidable divergences of perturbation theory. The existence of invariant regularizations allows solving the problem in most cases but the combination of gauge symmetry and chiral fermions leads to subtle issues. Depending on the specific group and field content, anomalies are found: obstructions to the quantization of chiral gauge symmetries. Because anomalies take the form of local polynomials in the fields, are linked to local group transformations, but vanish for global (rigid) transformations, one discovers that they have a topological character. In these notes we review various perturbative and non-perturbative regularization techniques, and show that they leave room for possible anomalies when both gauge fields and chiral fermions are present. We determine the form of anomalies in simple examples. We relate anomalies to the index of the Dirac operator in a gauge background. We exhibit gauge instantons that contribute to the anomaly in the example of the CP(N-1) models and SU(2) gauge theories. We briefly mention a few physical consequences. For many years the problem of anomalies had been discussed only within the framework of perturbation theory. New non-perturbative solutions based on lattice regularization have recently been proposed. We describe the so-called overlap and domain wall fermion formulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Einstein derived general relativity from Riemannian geometry. Connes extends this derivation to noncommutative geometry and obtains electro-magnetic, weak, and strong forces. These are pseudo forces, that accompany the gravitational force just as in Minkowskian geometry the magnetic force accompanies the electric force. The main physical input of Connes' derivation is parity violation. His main output is the Higgs boson which breaks the gauge symmetry spontaneously and gives masses to gauge and Higgs bosons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This lecture is devoted to solitons in supersymmetric theories. The emphasis is put on special features of supersymmetric solitons such as "BPS-ness". I explain why only zero modes are important in the quantization of the BPS solitons. Hybrid models (Landau-Ginzburg models on curved target spaces) are discussed in some detail. Topology of the target space plays a crucial role in the classification of the BPS solitons in these models. The phenomenon of multiplet shortening is considered. I present various topological indices (analogs of Witten's index) which count the number of solitons in various models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BRST-methods provide elegant and powerful tools for the construction and analysis of constrained systems, including models of particles, strings and fields. These lectures provide an elementary introduction to the ideas, illustrated with some important physical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In these lecture notes, an introduction to topological concepts and methods in studies of gauge field theories is presented. The three paradigms of topological objects, the Nielsen-Olesen vortex of the abelian Higgs model, the 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole of the non-abelian Higgs model and the instanton of Yang-Mills theory, are discussed. The common formal elements in their construction are emphasized and their different dynamical roles are exposed. The discussion of applications of topological methods to Quantum Chromodynamics focuses on confinement. An account is given of various attempts to relate this phenomenon to topological properties of Yang-Mills theory. The lecture notes also include an introduction to the underlying concept of homotopy with applications from various areas of physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of the 20th century saw the most revolutionary breakthroughs in the history of theoretical physics, the birth of general relativity and quantum field theory. The seemingly nearly completed description of our world by means of classical field theories in a simple Euclidean geometrical setting experienced major modifications: Euclidean geometry was abandoned in favor of Riemannian geometry, and the classical field theories had to be quantized. These ideas gave rise to today's theory of gravitation and the standard model of elementary particles, which describe nature better than anything physicists ever had at hand. The dramatically large number of successful predictions of both theories is accompanied by an equally dramatically large number of problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]