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Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

Strategic Alliances for a Secure, Connected, and Prosperous Region
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Author: Barry ONeill

Barry O'Neill is a Professor of Political Science at UCLA. His work focuses on decision-making in social and political contexts. He applies game theory to study of foreign policy decisions, with a view to preventing war.
Reconciling Power and Equality in International Organizations: A Voting Method from Rabbi Krochmal of Kremsier

Reconciling Power and Equality in International Organizations: A Voting Method from Rabbi Krochmal of Kremsier

October 30, 2000 | Barry ONeill, Bezalel Peleg
Organizations whose members are national governments face a problem in their choice of a voting mechanism: they need systems that recognize the greater power and contribution of the larger members while preserving some influence for the smaller ones. Voting by count and account is suggested here as providing a good compromise between power and equality. It avoids certain surprising and counterintuitive results produced by other systems that international bodies now use, such as basic votes. At the organization's founding it is easy to negotiate and it also symbolizes the accepted status relationships in an international body better than current methods do, thus giving a vote more legitimacy.