Abstract
This is a report of an analysis of voting power in the Finnish Parliament. The purpose of the analysis was (a) to reveal some characteristics of the indices for measuring a priori voting power, (b) to discuss the descriptive power of the chosen indices with respect to the composition of government, (c) to gain additional insight in the parliamentary system of Finland. Various power indices were calculated and compared to seat ratios and participation in Government. The numerical results indicate that some characteristics of Government formation, which are thought to be caused by an ideological bias, may as well be “explained” by the power indices. Two parties, the left-wing Democratic Union of the Finnish People (SKDL), and the right-wing Conservative Party (Kok), seem to be the victims of the numerical structure of the Finnish Parliament.
This article is a revised version of the author’s article “A Priori Party Power and Government Formation” published in Munich Social Science Review 4, 1978. The author is grateful to Jürgen Schielke for the collection of data, to R.J. Johnston for his computer program, to Robert Koll for aid in operating the computor program, and to Jacqueline Mitchell for editorial work on the paper.
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© 1981 Physica-Verlag, Würzburg (Germany)
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Holler, M.J. (1981). Party Power and Government Formation: A Case Study. In: Holler, M.J. (eds) Power, Voting, and Voting Power. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-00411-1_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-00411-1_21
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