In this chapter a few important seminal papers are briefly and critically reviewed in Section 2.1. Then the basic distinction in this book between ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ and ‘bargaining’ committees is introduced in Section 2.2. The related literature is summarily reviewed in Section 2.3.

Seminal papers and seminal ambiguities

In the wake of the seminal contribution of Shapley and Shubik [78] in 1954, a copious literature on so-called ‘power indices’ and ‘voting power’ in general has been, and continues to be, produced. In this section we review only a few basic and seminal papers, Shapley and Shubik's [78] and Banzhaf's [4], as well as other previous or subsequent papers that laid the conceptual framework for later developments in voting power analysis. This will put things into historical perspective, and will also allow us to introduce some important classic models that will play a role in the book. This brief critical overview also raises some doubts about the foundations, thus motivating the endeavour and goal of this book. It is also our ambitious hope that a second reading of this chapter after reading the rest of the book will provide a test of our success. This would be the case if, to some extent, the reader had the impression that the ideas in the book had provided him/her with new ‘glasses’ to look at and understand the issues raised in these papers and the lights and shadows in the answers proposed in them.