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Circumstantial Power: Some Hints for Finding Optimal Persuadable or Bribable Voters

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Power, Voting, and Voting Power: 30 Years After

Abstract

Two measures of circumstantial or local power are introduced here. In our approach we focus on the viewpoint of an external observer who tries to evaluate the probability of a proposal to be passed by a certain committee. According to this local point of view we analyze the changes in the probability to pass the issue at hand obtained by modifying a voters’ perception about the proposal. In particular, we are interested in finding optimal persuadable voters and optimal bribable voters. To this end three preorderings on the set of voters are considered which are proved to be useful to identify these optimal voters.

Research partially supported by Grants SGR 2009–1029 of “Generalitat de Catalunya”, MTM 2009–08037 from the Spanish Science and Innovation Ministry and MTM 2012–34426 from the Spanish Economy and Competitiveness Ministry.

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Correspondence to Josep Freixas .

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Freixas, J., Pons, M. (2013). Circumstantial Power: Some Hints for Finding Optimal Persuadable or Bribable Voters. In: Holler, M., Nurmi, H. (eds) Power, Voting, and Voting Power: 30 Years After. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35929-3_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35929-3_17

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