IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rif/dpaper/1162.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Council Voting Rules on EU Decision-Making

Author

Listed:
  • Widgrén, Mika

Abstract

This paper deals with the design of voting rules in the EU Council. Both internal and external impact of the voting rules are examined. Internal impact affects the distribution of power among the member states and external impact affects power relations between the main decision-making bodies in the EU. One of the main lessons of the analysis is that voting rules matter. This clearly explains why the design of Council voting rules has required so much bargaining and cumbersome marathon negotiations. The internal decision-making rules in the Council have substantial impact on both the national distribution of power in the Council and inter-institutional power between the EUŽs decision-making bodies.

Suggested Citation

  • Widgrén, Mika, 2008. "The Impact of Council Voting Rules on EU Decision-Making," Discussion Papers 1162, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    • Handle: RePEc:rif:dpaper:1162
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.etla.fi/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/dp1162.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francesco Passarelli & Jason Barr, 2007. "Preferences, the Agenda Setter, and the Distribution of Power in the EU," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 28(1), pages 41-60, January.
    2. Widgren, Mika & Kauppi, Heikki, 2008. "Do Benevolent Aspects Have Room in Explaining EU Budget Receipts?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6778, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Federico Valenciano & Annick Laruelle, 2002. "Assessment Of Voting Situations: The Probabilistic Foundations," Working Papers. Serie AD 2002-22, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    4. Widgren, Mika, 1994. "Voting power in the EC decision making and the consequences of two different enlargements," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 1153-1170, May.
    5. Philip Straffin, 1977. "Homogeneity, independence, and power indices," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 107-118, June.
    6. Laruelle, Annick & Widgren, Mika, 1998. "Is the Allocation of Voting Power among EU States Fair?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(3-4), pages 317-339, March.
    7. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2006. "The Inter-Institutional Distribution of Power in EU Codecision," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 27(1), pages 129-154, August.
    8. Pradeep Dubey & Lloyd S. Shapley, 1979. "Mathematical Properties of the Banzhaf Power Index," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 4(2), pages 99-131, May.
    9. Moshé Machover & Dan S. Felsenthal, 2001. "The Treaty of Nice and qualified majority voting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 18(3), pages 431-464.
    10. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgren, 2004. "Power Measurement as Sensitivity Analysis," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 16(4), pages 517-538, October.
    11. Napel, Stefan & Widgrén, Mika, 2017. "Power measurement as sensitivity analysis: a unified approach," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 345, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    12. Shapley, L. S. & Shubik, Martin, 1954. "A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(3), pages 787-792, September.
    13. Baldwin, Richard & Widgren, Mika, 2004. "Winners and Losers Under Various Dual Majority Rules for the EU Council of Ministers," CEPR Discussion Papers 4450, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Dan S Felsenthal & Moshé Machover, 2004. "Analysis of QM rules in the draft constitution for Europe proposed by the European Convention, 2003," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 23(1), pages 1-20, August.
    15. Kauppi, Heikki & Widgren, Mika, 2007. "Voting rules and budget allocation in the enlarged EU," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 693-706, September.
    16. Laruelle, Annick & Valenciano, Federico, 2008. "Noncooperative foundations of bargaining power in committees and the Shapley-Shubik index," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 341-353, May.
    17. Guillermo Owen, 1972. "Multilinear Extensions of Games," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(5-Part-2), pages 64-79, January.
    18. Bernard Steunenberg & Dieter Schmidtchen & Christian Koboldt, 1999. "Strategic Power in the European Union," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 11(3), pages 339-366, July.
    19. George Tsebelis & Geoffrey Garrett, 2000. "Legislative Politics in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 1(1), pages 9-36, February.
    20. Widgren, Mika, 1995. " Probabilistic Voting Power in the EU Council: The Cases of Trade Policy and Social Regulation," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 97(2), pages 345-356, June.
    21. Tsebelis, George, 1994. "The Power of the European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda Setter," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(1), pages 128-142, March.
    22. Leech, Dennis, 2002. "Designing the Voting System for the Council of the European Union," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 113(3-4), pages 437-464, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Becker, Sascha O. & Egger, Peter H. & von Ehrlich, Maximilian, 2012. "Too much of a good thing? On the growth effects of the EU's regional policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 648-668.

    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. Mika Widgrén, 2008. "The Impact of Council's Internal Decision-Making Rules on the Future EU," Discussion Papers 26, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    2. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2011. "Strategic versus non-strategic voting power in the EU Council of Ministers: the consultation procedure," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(3), pages 511-541, September.
    3. Widgren, Mika & Kauppi, Heikki, 2008. "Do Benevolent Aspects Have Room in Explaining EU Budget Receipts?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6778, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Kauppi, Heikki & Widgrén, Mika, 2008. "Do Benevolent Aspects Have Room Explaining EU Bydget Receipts?," Discussion Papers 1161, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    5. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgren, 2004. "Power Measurement as Sensitivity Analysis," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 16(4), pages 517-538, October.
    6. Le Breton, Michel & Montero, Maria & Zaporozhets, Vera, 2012. "Voting power in the EU council of ministers and fair decision making in distributive politics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 159-173.
    7. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2006. "The Inter-Institutional Distribution of Power in EU Codecision," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 27(1), pages 129-154, August.
    8. Napel, Stefan & Widgrén, Mika, 2017. "Power measurement as sensitivity analysis: a unified approach," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 345, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    9. Kauppi, Heikki & Widgren, Mika, 2007. "Voting rules and budget allocation in the enlarged EU," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 693-706, September.
    10. Le Breton, Michel & Montero, Maria & Zaporozhets, Vera, 2012. "Voting power in the EU council of ministers and fair decision making in distributive politics," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 159-173.
    11. Di Giannatale, Paolo & Passarelli, Francesco, 2013. "Voting chances instead of voting weights," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 164-173.
    12. Stefano Benati & Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti, 2013. "Probabilistic spatial power indexes," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(2), pages 391-410, February.
    13. Manfred Holler & Stefan Napel, 2005. "Local monotonicity of power: Axiom or just a property?," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 38(5), pages 637-647, January.
    14. Serguei Kaniovski, 2008. "The exact bias of the Banzhaf measure of power when votes are neither equiprobable nor independent," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(2), pages 281-300, August.
    15. Stefano Benati & Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti, 2021. "Voting power on a graph connected political space with an application to decision-making in the Council of the European Union," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(4), pages 733-761, November.
    16. Mika Widgren, 2003. "Power in the Design of Constitutional Rules," European Economy Group Working Papers 23, European Economy Group.
    17. Stefan Napel & Mika Widgrén, 2008. "The European Commission–Appointment, preferences, and institutional relations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 21-41, October.
    18. Matthias Weber, 2014. "Choosing Voting Systems behind the Veil of Ignorance: A Two-Tier Voting Experiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-042/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    19. Zhi WANG & Shangjin WEI & Kei-Mu YI, 2009. "Value Chain in East Asia Production Network -An International Input-output Model Based Analysis," EcoMod2009 21500090, EcoMod.
    20. Badinger, Harald & Mühlböck, Monika & Nindl, Elisabeth & Reuter, Wolf Heinrich, 2014. "Theoretical vs. empirical power indices: Do preferences matter?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 158-176.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    European integration; Council of Ministers; power;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

    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:rif:dpaper:1162. 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: Kaija Hyvönen-Rajecki (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/etlaafi.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.