Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T13:45:56.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assessment of Political Power in the Israeli Knesset

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Amnon Rapoport  and
Esther Golan
Amnon Rapoport
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
Esther Golan
Affiliation:
University of Tel Aviv
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Immediately after the election to the tenth Israeli parliament (Knesset), 21 students of political science, 24 Knesset members, and seven parliamentary correspondents were each asked (a) to assess the political power ratios of the 10 parties represented in the Knesset and (b) to judge the ideological similarity between them. As ascertained by Saaty's analytic hierarchy scaling technique, the power ratio judgments proved sufficiently consistent to justify the construction of individual ratio scales of perceived political power. The ideological proximities were adequately represented by two-dimensional ideological spaces. Analyses of the derived power measures showed that the higher the political sophistication of the subject, the higher the combined power attributed to the religious parties and the lower the combined power assigned to the two largest parties Likud and Labor. The derived power measures were then compared to the predictions of six power indices, three of which only consider the ideological space. Of the six models, the generalized Banzhaf power index best accounted for the perceived power of 62% of the subjects, whereas the classical Shapley-Shubik index provided the best fit for 31% of the subjects. The generalized power indices were found only partly satisfactory with a need for further revision.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 79 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 673 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arian, A. The choosing people: Voting behavior in Israel. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Arian, A. Voting and ideology in Israel. Midwest Journal of Political Science, 1966, 10, 265–287.10.2307/2108886CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Axelrod, R. Conflict of interest: A theory of divergent goals with applications to politics. Chicago: Markham, 1970.Google Scholar
Banzhaf, J. F. III. Weighted voting doesn't work: A mathematical analysis. Rutgers Law Review, 1965, 19, 317–343.Google Scholar
Belton, V., & Gear, T. On a shortcoming of Saaty's method of analytic hierarchies. Omega, 1983, 11, 228–230.10.1016/0305-0483(83)90047-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coxon, A. P. M. The user's guide to multidimensional scaling. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1982.Google Scholar
Davison, M. L. Multidimensional Scaling. New York: Wiley, 1983.Google Scholar
Deegan, J., & Packel, E. W. A new index of power for simple n-person games. International Journal of Game Theory, 1979, 7, 113–123.10.1007/BF01753239CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeSwaan, A. Coalition theories and cabinet formation. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1973.Google Scholar
Dubey, P. On the uniqueness of the Shapley value. International Journal of Game Theory, 1975, 4, 131–139.10.1007/BF01780630CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dubey, P., & Shapley, L. S. Mathematical properties of the Banzhaf power index. Mathematics of Operations Research, 1979, 4, 99–131.10.1287/moor.4.2.99CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamson, W. A. A theory of coalition formation. American Sociological Review, 1961, 26, 373–382.10.2307/2090664CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golan, E. Assessment of voting power and ideological similarity between parties in the Knesset. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University, Israel, 1984.Google Scholar
Grofman, B. A dynamic model of protocoalition formation in ideological N-space. Behavioral Science, 1982, 27, 77–90.10.1002/bs.3830270108CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruskal, J. B., & Wish, M. Multidimensional scaling. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1978.10.4135/9781412985130CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lasswell, H. D., & Kaplan, A. Power and society: A framework for political inquiry. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950.Google Scholar
Owen, G. Political games. Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 1971, 18, 345–355.10.1002/nav.3800180307CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, T. On the concept of political power. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1963, 107, 232–262.Google Scholar
Riker, W. H. The theory of political coalitions. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Roth, A. E. The Shapley value as a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility. Econometrica, 1977, 45, 657–664.10.2307/1911680CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saaty, T. L. A scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1977, 15, 234–281.10.1016/0022-2496(77)90033-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saaty, T. L. The analytic hierarchy process. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980.Google Scholar
Saaty, T. L. What is the analytic hierarchy process? Unpublished manuscript, 1983.Google ScholarPubMed
Schiffman, S. S., Reynolds, M. L., & Young, F. W. Introduction to multidimensional scaling. New York: Academic Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Seliktar, O. Israel: Fragile coalitions in a new nation. In Browne, E. C. and Dreijmanis, J. (Eds.), Government coalitions in Western democracies. New York: Longman, 1982, pp. 283–314.Google Scholar
Shapley, L. S. A comparison of power indices and a nonsymmetric generalization. Rand Corporation Paper No. P-5872, The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif., 1977.Google Scholar
Shapley, L. W. A value for n-person games. In Kuhn, H. W. and Tucker, A. W. (Eds.), Contributions to the theory of games, II. Annals of mathematics studies No. 28. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. 307–317.Google Scholar
Shapley, L. S. Simple games: An outline of the descriptive theory. Behavioral Science, 1962, 7, 59–66.10.1002/bs.3830070104CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shapley, L. S., & Shubik, M. A method for evaluating the distribution of power in a committee system. American Political Science Review, 1954, 48, 787–792.10.2307/1951053CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shenoy, P. P. The Banzhaf index for political games. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Public Choice Society, San Francisco, Calif., 1980.Google Scholar
Straffin, P. D. Jr. Probability models for power indices. In Ordeshook, P. C. (Ed.), Game theory and political science. New York: New York University Press, 1978, pp. 477–510.Google Scholar
Taylor, M., & Laver, M. Government coalitions in western Europe. European Journal of Political Research, 1973, 1, 205–248.10.1111/j.1475-6765.1973.tb01228.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thibaut, J., & Kelley, H. H. The social psychology of groups. New York: Wiley, 1959.Google Scholar
von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. Theory of games and economic behavior (2nd ed.). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947.Google Scholar
Winer, M. Cabinet coalition formation: A gametheoretic analysis. In Brams, S., Schotter, A., & Schwödiauer, G. (Eds.), Applied game theory. Vienna: Physica-Verlag, 1979.Google Scholar
Young, F. W., & Lewyckyj, R. ALSCAL-4: User's guide (2nd ed.). Chapel Hill, N.C.: Data Analysis and Theory Associates, 1979.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.