Political and economic institutions are typically governed by committees that face the challenge to reconcile the preferences of their members. How should decision rules be designed to generate fair and sustainable agreements, for example if committee members represent groups of different sizes? This book uses game-theoretic concepts and models to address the issue of political decision-making processes. In addition to providing a survey on basic game-theoretic tools in the analysis of political decisions, the author looks at specific issues such as two-tiered voting systems or the influence of lobbyists on legislative committees, and shows how the models can be applied to real-world contexts such as the EU decision-making institutions.

This article reviews recent developments in the theory of committee decision-making. A committee consists of self-interested members who make a public decision by aggregating imperfect information dispersed among them according to a pre-specified decision rule. We focus on costly information acquisition, strategic information aggregation, and rules and processes that enhance the quality of the committee decision. Seeming inefficiencies of the committee decision-making process such as over-cautiousness, voting, and delay emerge as partial remedies to these incentive problems. Cet article passé en revue certains développements récents dans la théorie de la prise de décision en comité. Un comité est défini comme un groupe de membres qui ont des intérêts particuliers et qui prennent une décision publique en agrégeant une information imparfaite et dispersée à travers le groupe selon une règle de decision pré-établie. Les auteurs portent leur attention sur l'acquisition coûteuse d'information, l'agrégation de l'information stratégique, et les règles et procédures qui accroîssent la qualité de la decision en comité. Ce qui apparaît comme des inefficacités du processus de prise de décision en comité (sur-précaution, votes, délais) s'avère être des remèdes partiels aux problèmes d'incitation.

This article is concerned with the role of committees in collective decision making processes in a world where agents must be motivated to collect information. Committees improve the quality of decision making by providing information and by coordinating the collection of information. We address two types of questions. First, how does the composition of a committee affect final decisions? Second, what is the optimal composition of a committee from the decision maker's point of view? As to the latter question, we show that the cost of information collection plays an important role. If this cost is low, then the preferences of the committee members should be aligned to those of the decision maker. Members with similar preferences as the decision maker collect the proper pieces of information. Moreover, manipulation of information does not occur if the preferences of the decision maker and the members are consonant. If the cost of searching is high, then the committee should be composed of members with polarized preferences. Outliers have a strong incentive to search for information.

Political and economic institutions are typically governed by committees that face the challenge to reconcile the preferences of their members. How should decision rules be designed to generate fair and sustainable agreements, for example if committee members represent groups of different sizes? This book uses game-theoretic concepts and models to address the issue of political decision-making processes. In addition to providing a survey on basic game-theoretic tools in the analysis of political decisions, the author looks at specific issues such as two-tiered voting systems or the influence of lobbyists on legislative committees, and shows how the models can be applied to real-world contexts such as the EU decision-making institutions.