Power indices suggest that adding new members to a voting body may affect the balance of power between the original members even if their number of votes and the decision rule remain constant. Some of the original members may actually gain, a phenomenon known as the paradox of new members. We...

Many important decisions are taken according to weighted majority rule. Power indices predict that enlargement of the voting body may affect the balance of power between the original members even if their number of votes and the decision rule remain constant. Some of the existing voters may...

We study vote buying by competing interest groups in a variety of electoral and contractual settings. While increasing the size of a voting body reduces its buyability in the absence of competition, we show that larger voting bodies may be more buyable than smaller voting bodies when interest...

In the presence of competing interest groups, this paper examines how the form of vote-buying contracts affects policy outcomes. We study contracts contingent upon individual votes, policy outcomes, and/or vote shares. Voters either care about their individual votes, or about the policy outcome....