Authors
László A Kóczy, Balázs Sziklai
Publication date
2015/5/26
Journal
Homo Oeconomicus
Volume
32
Issue
1
Pages
101-116
Description
Few elections attract so much attention as the Papal Conclave that elects the religious leader of over a billion Catholics worldwide. The Conclave is an interesting case of qualified majority voting with many participants and no formal voting blocks. Each cardinal is a well-known public figure with publicly available personal data and well-known positions on public matters. This provides excellent grounds for a study of spatial voting: In this brief note we study voting in the Papal Conclave after the resignation of Benedict XVI. We describe the method of the election and based on a simple estimation of certain factors that seem to influence the electors’ preferences we calculate the power of each cardinal in the conclave as the Shapley-Shubik index of the corresponding voting game over a convex geometry.
Total citations
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Scholar articles
LA Kóczy, B Sziklai - Homo Oeconomicus, 2015