To read this content please select one of the options below:

Penrose and the Indifferent Crowd

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including A Symposium on Carl Menger at the Centenary of His Death

ISBN: 978-1-80071-145-7, eISBN: 978-1-80071-144-0

Publication date: 25 August 2021

Abstract

Today Lionel Penrose is recognised as the co-author of one of the two leading indices of power in voting legislatures – a field of study that game theory in general, and cooperative game theory in particular, has been reclaiming from sociology and political science since the 1950s. The main claim of this paper is that Penrose developed his index so as to tackle questions that go vastly beyond the narrow domain of voting; namely, acute social issues during the Cold War such as the outburst and propagation of panics, the ideological susceptibility of populations, the escalation of military conflict and the successful installation of authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, by revisiting the history of the Penrose power index, the paper re-evaluates some of its key underlying assumptions: assumptions that have been heavily – and unfairly, as the paper argues – criticised over the last decade.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the editors of RHETM, Steven G. Medema, the participants at the 2018 History of Recent Social Science conference in Zurich, the members of the OZSW Peer-review Circle Practical Philosophy, and the History of Philosophy research group at the VU, Amsterdam. Special thanks to Matthew Braham, Stefan Napel, Mark Solovey, Timothy Barnard and Luca Fiorito.

Citation

Uzunova, M. (2021), "Penrose and the Indifferent Crowd", Fiorito, L., Scheall, S. and Suprinyak, C.E. (Ed.) Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including A Symposium on Carl Menger at the Centenary of His Death (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 39B), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 77-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542021000039B006

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021 Emerald Publishing Limited