Institutional Design And Voting Power In The European Union

Leading global experts in the field of politics and mathematics bring forth key insights on how voting power should be allocated between EU member states, and what the policy consequences are of any given institutional design. Close attention is paid to the practical implications of decision-making rules, the nature and distribution of power, and the most equitable ways to represent the preoccupations of European citizens both in the Council and European Parliament. Highly theoretical and methodologically advanced, this volume is set to enrich the debate on the future of the EU's institutional design. A valuable source of information to scholars of political science, European studies and law, as well as to people working on game theory, theory of voting and, in general, applications of mathematics to social science.

"This is a terrific book. The questions that Slapin asks about intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) in the European Union are extraordinarily important and ambitious, with implications for the EU and for international cooperation more generally. Furthermore, Slapin's theorizing of his core questions is rigorous, lucid, and accessible to scholarly readers without extensive formal modeling background . . . This book is a solid, serious contribution to the literature on EU studies." ---Mark Pollack, Temple University "An excellent example of the growing literature that brings modern political science to bear on the politics of the European Union." ---Michael Laver, New York University Veto rights can be a meaningful source of power only when leaving an organization is extremely unlikely. For example, small European states have periodically wielded their veto privileges to override the preferences of their larger, more economically and militarily powerful neighbors when negotiating European Union treaties, which require the unanimous consent of all EU members. Jonathan B. Slapin traces the historical development of the veto privilege in the EU and how a veto---or veto threat---has been employed in treaty negotiations of the past two decades. As he explains, the importance of veto power in treaty negotiations is one of the features that distinguishes the EU from other international organizations in which exit and expulsion threats play a greater role. At the same time, the prominence of veto power means that bargaining in the EU looks more like bargaining in a federal system. Slapin's findings have significant ramifications for the study of international negotiations, the design of international organizations, and European integration.

This book looks at democratic empowerment via institutional designs that extend the political rights of European citizens. It focuses on three themes: first, the positive and negative effects of the European Union institutional design on the political rights of its citizens; second, challenges for democratic regimes across the world in the 21st century in the context of regionalism and globalization; third, the constraints of neoliberalism and capitalist markets on the ability of citizens to effectively achieve their political rights within the Union.

This books examines the institutional foundations of coalition government in the ten post-communist democracies of Eastern and Central Europe for the 1990-2010 period: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Its central argument is that differences in the arrangement of political institutions systematically explain variations in patterns of multi-party government across these states. The book starts with the premise that electoral systems and constitutional provisions about the powers, the structure, and the relationship between parliament and the presidency determine the degree to which political power is dispersed or concentrated in the political system. On the basis of these institutional features, three groups of states are distinguished with regard to their degree of power concentration; the substantive chapters of the book demonstrate how these institutional combinations and differences shape three specific facets of party government which capture the main stages of the lifecycle of coalitions governments: the formation of electoral coalitions, government formation and government duration. Specifically, three comparative chapters assess the impact of institutional power concentration on the size of electoral coalitions; the likelihood that political parties form a minority government; and the number of days that a government lasts in office. The main finding of the book is that power concentration matters: political parties in those democracies where institutions are designed to concentrate political power tend to form large electoral coalitions, they tend to form majority rather than undersized governments, and they build more durable cabinets. In addition, the book contains a detailed case study of government formation in Hungary and a previously unstudied comparison of indirect presidential elections in four states: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu.

Leading global experts in the field of politics and mathematics bring forth key insights on how voting power should be allocated between EU member states, and what the policy consequences are of any given institutional design. Close attention is paid to the practical implications of decision-making rules, the nature and distribution of power, and the most equitable ways to represent the preoccupations of European citizens both in the Council and European Parliament. Highly theoretical and methodologically advanced, this volume is set to enrich the debate on the future of the EU's institutional design. A valuable source of information to scholars of political science, European studies and law, as well as to people working on game theory, theory of voting and, in general, applications of mathematics to social science.

The developments over a thirty-year time span in the study of power, especially voting power, are traced in this book, which provides an up-to-date overview of applications of n-person game theory to the study of power in multimember bodies. Other theories that shed light on power distribution (e.g. aggregation theory) are treated as well. The book revisits the themes discussed in the well-known 1982 publication "Power, Voting and Voting Power" (edited by Manfred J. Holler). Thirty years later this essential topic has been taken up again and many of the authors from its predecessor participate here again in discussing the state-of-the-art, demonstrating the achievements of three decades of intensive research, and pointing the way to key issues for future work.

This collection of essays honouring Dan Felsenthal and Moshé Machover reconsiders foundational aspects of the measurement of voting power. The specific case of voting power in two-tier systems - for instance the US system and the EU system - is analysed. Furthermore major power indices - Penrose, Banzhaf, Shapley-Shubik and others are revisited. The book proposes new voting procedures and studies well-known procedures and/or apportionment methods either from a technical or historical point of view.