IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erp/conweb/p0019.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Democracy and the European Constitution: Majority Voting and Small Member States

Author

Listed:
  • Johannes Pollak

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the relation between large and small member states with regard to the majority principle. Since Maastricht at the latest the institutional discussion centers around the question of how to devise a decision system which pays equal attention to the interests of small and large states in the European Union. This article challenges several underlying assumptions: that size is an important factor determining the political clout of a member state; the existence of ‘natural’ interest divergences and the competitive nature of the European politiy. Finally, it questions the intrinsic relation between majority voting and democracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Pollak, 2004. "Democracy and the European Constitution: Majority Voting and Small Member States," The Constitutionalism Web-Papers p0019, University of Hamburg, Faculty for Economics and Social Sciences, Department of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:erp:conweb:p0019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fachbereich-sowi/professuren/wiener/dokumente/conwebpaperspdfs/2004/conweb-4-2004.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giandomenico Majone, 1996. "Temporal Consistency and Policy Credibility: Why Democracies Need Non-Majoritarian Institutions," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 57, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).
    2. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2001. "An Empirical Example of the Condorcet Paradox of Voting in a Large Electorate," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 107(1-2), pages 135-145, April.
    3. Widgrén, Mika, 1994. "The Relation Between Voting Power and Policy Impact in the European Union," CEPR Discussion Papers 1033, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Amartya Sen, 1999. "The Possibility of Social Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 349-378, June.
    5. Jones, Bradford & Radcliff, Benjamin & Taber, Charles & Timpone, Richard, 1995. "Condorcet Winners and the Paradox of Voting: Probability Calculations for Weak Preference Orders," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(1), pages 137-144, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mostapha Diss & Eric Kamwa, 2019. "Simulations in Models of Preference Aggregation," Working Papers hal-02424936, HAL.
    2. Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2018. "Trump, Condorcet and Borda: Voting paradoxes in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 29-35.
    3. Adrian Deemen, 2014. "On the empirical relevance of Condorcet’s paradox," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 311-330, March.
    4. Mehdi Feizi & Rasoul Ramezanian & Saeed Malek Sadati, 2020. "Borda paradox in the 2017 Iranian presidential election: empirical evidence from opinion polls," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 101-113, June.
    5. Vincenzo Atella & Jay Coggins & Federico Perali, 2005. "Aversion to inequality in Italy and its determinants," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 2(2), pages 117-144, January.
    6. Regenwetter, Michel & Grofman, Bernard & Marley, A. A. J., 2002. "On the model dependence of majority preference relations reconstructed from ballot or survey data," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 451-466, July.
    7. Simplice A. Asongu & Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2018. "Increasing Foreign Aid for Inclusive Human Development in Africa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(2), pages 443-466, July.
    8. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Bernard Van Praag, 2003. "Income Satisfaction Inequality and its Causes," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(2), pages 107-127, August.
    9. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10286 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Merlin, Vincent & Valognes, Fabrice, 2004. "The impact of indifferent voters on the likelihood of some voting paradoxes," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 343-361, November.
    11. Veneziani, Roberto & Yoshihara, Naoki, 2014. "One million miles to go: taking the axiomatic road to defining exploitation," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2014-10, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    12. William Gehrlein, 2002. "Condorcet's paradox and the likelihood of its occurrence: different perspectives on balanced preferences ," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 171-199, March.
    13. Mollie Painter-Morland & Geert Demuijnck & Sara Ornati, 2017. "Sustainable Development and Well-Being: A Philosophical Challenge," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 146(2), pages 295-311, December.
    14. Khalid Iqbal, 2017. "Welfare Economics: A Story of Existence," Romanian Economic Journal, Department of International Business and Economics from the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, vol. 20(64), pages 75-83, June.
    15. Hervé Crès, 2000. "Aggregation of Coarse Preferences," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01064879, HAL.
    16. Casella, Alessandra, 1996. "Large countries, small countries and the enlargement of trade blocs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 389-415, February.
    17. Antoinette Baujard, 2016. "Welfare economics," Chapters, in: Gilbert Faccarello & Heinz D. Kurz (ed.), Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis Volume III, chapter 42, pages 611-624, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi & Knight, John, 2007. "Community, comparisons and subjective well-being in a divided society," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 69-90, September.
    19. Chris Hanretty & Christel Koop, 2013. "Shall the law set them free? The formal and actual independence of regulatory agencies," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(2), pages 195-214, June.
    20. Harrison-Trainor, Matthew, 2022. "An analysis of random elections with large numbers of voters," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 68-84.
    21. Mariotti, Marco & Veneziani, Roberto, 2014. "The Liberal Ethics of Non-Interference and the Pareto Principle," SIRE Discussion Papers 2014-016, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    democracy; majority voting; European Convention; legitimacy; political science;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erp:conweb:p0019. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jan WILKENS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.wiso.uni-hamburg.de/fachbereich-sowi/professuren/wiener/forschung/publikationen/conwebpapers.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.