Coalition Formation and Social Choice provides a unified and
comprehensive study of coalition formation and collective
decision-making in committees. It discusses the main existing theories
including the size principle, conflict of interest theory, dominant
player theory, policy distance theory and power excess theory. In
addition, the book offers new theories of coalition formation in which
the endogenous formation of preferences for coalitions is basic. Both
simple game theory and social choice theory are extensively applied in
the treatment of the theories. This combined application not only leads
to new theories but also offers a new and fresh perspective on coalition
formation and collective decision-making in committees.
The book covers the fundamental concepts and results of social choice
theory including Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Furthermore, it gives a
coherent treatment of the theory of simple games. Besides more
traditional topics in simple game theory like power indices, it also
introduces new aspects of simple games such as the Chow parameter, the
Chow vector and the notion of similar games.