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Designing the voting system for the Council of the European Union
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UNSPECIFIED (2002) Designing the voting system for the Council of the European Union. PUBLIC CHOICE, 113 (3-4). pp. 437-464. ISSN 0048-5829
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This paper examines the system of Qualified Majority Voting, used by the Council of the European Union, from the perspective of enlargement of the Union. It uses an approach based on power indices due to Penrose (1946), Banzhaf (1965) and Coleman (1971) to make two analyses: (1) the question of the voting power of member countries from the point of view of fairness, and (2) the question of how the threshold number of votes required for QMV should be determined. It studies two scenarios for change from 2005 onwards envisaged by the Nice Treaty: (1) no enlargement, the EU comprising 15 member countries, and (2) full enlargement to 27 members by the accession of all the present twelve candidates. The proposal is made that fair weights be determined algorithmically as a technical or routine matter as the membership changes. The analysis of how the threshold affects power shows the trade-offs that countries face between their blocking power and the power of the Council to act. The main findings are: (1) that the weights laid down in the Nice Treaty are close to being fair, the only significant discrepancies being the under-representation of Germany and Romania, and the over-representation of Spain and Poland; (2) the threshold required for a decision is set too high for the Council to be an effective decision making body.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions J Political Science > JA Political science (General) |
| Journal or Publication Title: | PUBLIC CHOICE |
| Publisher: | KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBL |
| ISSN: | 0048-5829 |
| Date: | December 2002 |
| Volume: | 113 |
| Number: | 3-4 |
| Number of Pages: | 28 |
| Page Range: | pp. 437-464 |
| Publication Status: | Published |
| URI: | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/10468 |
Data sourced from Thomson Reuters' Web of Knowledge
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