Individuals have a wide, indeed, potentially infinite range of interests; these are ranked in the most complicated manner; indeed, the ranking is so complicated that individuals themselves do not perceive what it is. Our interest in art, food, travel, and various social matters belongs to different 'areas' which we are rarely called to compare or contrast. Yet, if one wants to assess the power of an individual over another, one may have to take all these aspects into consideration. The comprehensive analysis of power thus makes us enter farther and farther fields. But in voting situations or in committee decisions, on the contrary, problems are narrowed down, because a decision has to be made between two or a small number of issues or candidates. The general preference process is, so to speak, operationalized into a choice mechanism that, however difficult it may be in many circumstances, is nonetheless markedly simplified by comparison with the theoretical choices that might be made. The proof of this drastic reduction of the ends is indeed given by the fact that many feel that voting decisions do not leave electors with a 'real choice, that candidates or parties are too similar to each other, for instance, or that the issues are not clear-cut enough. Be that as it may, the fact is that effective choice is constrained by the process of decision itself. There is also simplification at the level of the means because of a number of rules that the democratic system of voting and committee decision-making imposes. The reason why it is not very interesting to assess committee decisions in his way if, for instance, someone like Stalin 'dominates' a committee is because Stalin would simply set aside the rules and threaten committee members if they did not support his views. But a 'regular democratic committee is one where a number of rules are scrupulously observed and where, in particular, great store is placed on rules relating to the ways in which issues are placed on the agenda, debated restricting the freedom of members to act equalizing in an and voted on. The voting rules (majority voting, for instance) are of course those that are most conspicuous in 'in egalitarian' manner, but the whole of the procedure also contributes to the general framework. It becomes therefore both interesting and possible to analyze the effect of these rules on the decision-making process and specifically to examine the ' paradoxes' inherent in such a system as well as the ways in which one or more of the members can maximize their own interests in the context of the system.