Representation as power: voter inequality in scientific collaborations

A novel method of evaluating the voting power of coalitions in at-large elections to representative bodies is developed by applying economic and other indices to representation. It is developed in the context of international scientific collaborations, specifically CODEX-b, but is also applicable more generally. The political salience of power is taken to be the necessity of keeping member institutions in collaboration, reassuring members that their interests are represented by the governing body in order to discourage them from defecting. Such an approach leads to the consideration of representation as power , in contrast to much of the existing literature, which focuses on voters' ability to influence the passage of resolutions before a voting body. The method evaluates how voting rules, voting weights, and representation guarantees affect the inequality of fractional representation among individuals, institutions, and geographical clusters of institutions. Voter preferences are modeled based on the geographical locations of their home institutions in order to investigate the a priori power of those institutions under different assumptions of member loyalty. Finally, the method is applied to several illustrative example scenarios. JEL Classification: D72