Machover, Moshé (1936-)

Moshé Machover is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of London. A mathematician and logician by training, he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ), spent 1959–1960 as a UNESCO Fellow at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and received his PhD at HUJ in 1962 and worked there as a lecturer in mathematics until 1964. From 1964 until 1966 he was a visiting lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Bristol. After a short period as a lecturer at HUJ, Machover moved to the University of London, where he worked first as reader of mathematical logic and thereafter as professor of philosophy until becoming professor emeritus in 1999. Since 2001 he has been the codirector of the Voting Power and Procedures (VPP) Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Until the early 1990s, the main focus of Machover's work was in mathematical logic, more specifically the philosophy of mathematics, recursion theory, and nonstandard analysis. Machover is the author or coauthor of four books: A Course in Mathematical Logic (with J. L. Bell in 1977), Laws of Chaos: A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy (with E. Farjoun in 1983), Set Theory, Logic and their Limitations (in 1996), and The Measurement of Voting Power: Theory and Practice, Problems and Paradoxes (with Dan. S. Felsenthal in 1998). In the 1990s Machover started the extended and very productive collaboration with Felsenthal that produced the fourth book. Their early work dealt with specific voting procedures such as the sequential voting by veto, the method for electing the Israeli prime minister, and Condorcet's method of voting. The main focus of the collaboration has, however, been on the measurement of voting power in multimember bodies. The best-known contributions of this collaboration are the distinction between I-power and P-power, the reinterpretation of various paradoxes pertaining to voting power measures, and the analysis of ternary voting games. In addition, they have extensively and authoritatively discussed the history and main applications of power measures in many articles and in The Measurement of Voting Power. Of particular practical importance are their studies on the Council of Ministers of the European Union and, more generally, the workings of European Union institutions after the recent expansion. The authors have on several occasions expressed their concern about the decision-making capability of the Union at its current size when the prevailing decision rules basically stem from the period when the Union had 12 members. The most visible and practical role of VPP has undoubtedly been to contribute to the debate on institutional reform in the EU. The paradoxes of voting power have also been dealt with by these authors. They argue that many paradoxes—notably the paradox of large size, the paradox of redistribution, and the paradox of new members—have been regarded as such mainly because of the rhetoric used in their expression or because of the failure to distinguish between absolute and relative power. Along with his multidisciplinary scholarly work, Machover has been an active discussant and commentator in matters ranging from EU institutions (especially decision making and distribution of voting power) to Middle Eastern political developments.

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