IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/24230.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Qualified majority voting explained

Author

Listed:
  • Felsenthal, Dan S.
  • Machover, Moshé

Abstract

We explain the issue of the decision rule of the EU's Council of Ministers. We outline, in as non-technical fashion as we can, the mathematical theory (due to L S Penrose) that addresses this sort of issue. We assess the decision rule prescribed in the Nice Treaty as well as that included in the Draft Constitution proposed by the European Convention. Finally, we propose our own solution to this problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Felsenthal, Dan S. & Machover, Moshé, 2004. "Qualified majority voting explained," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24230, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:24230
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/24230/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dan S. Felsenthal & Moshé Machover, 1998. "The Measurement of Voting Power," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1489.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    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. Federico Valenciano & Annick Laruelle & Ricardo Martínez, 2004. "On The Difficulty Of Making Decisions Within The Eu-25," Working Papers. Serie AD 2004-15, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    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. Kauppi, Heikki & Widgrén, Mika, 2008. "Do Benevolent Aspects Have Room Explaining EU Bydget Receipts?," Discussion Papers 1161, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    4. Nicola Maaser & Stefan Napel, 2007. "Equal representation in two-tier voting systems," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 28(3), pages 401-420, April.

    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. Roy, Sonali, 2008. "The exact lower bound for the Coleman index of the power of a collectivity for a special class of simple majority games," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 296-300, September.
    2. 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.
    3. Alonso-Meijide, J.M. & Bilbao, J.M. & Casas-Méndez, B. & Fernández, J.R., 2009. "Weighted multiple majority games with unions: Generating functions and applications to the European Union," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 198(2), pages 530-544, October.
    4. 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.
    5. Zaporozhets, Vera, 2015. "Power Distribution in French River Basin Committees," TSE Working Papers 15-558, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    6. Zineb Abidi & Matthieu Leprince & Vincent Merlin, 2020. "Power Inequality in Inter-communal Structures: The Simulated Impact of a Reform in the Case of the Municipalities in Western France," Post-Print halshs-02996998, HAL.
    7. 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.
    8. Di Giannatale, Paolo & Passarelli, Francesco, 2013. "Voting chances instead of voting weights," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 164-173.
    9. Algaba, E. & Bilbao, J.M. & Fernandez, J.R., 2007. "The distribution of power in the European Constitution," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 176(3), pages 1752-1766, February.
    10. Michel Le Breton & Dominique Lepelley, 2014. "Une analyse de la loi électorale du 29 juin 1820," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 65(3), pages 469-518.
    11. Leech, Dennis & Leech, Robert, 2009. "Reforming IMF and World Bank governance : in search of simplicity, transparency and democratic legitimacy in the voting rules," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 914, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    12. Plechanovová, Bela, 2004. "Draft constitution and the decision-making rule for the Council of Ministers of the EU Looking for alternative solution," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 8, September.
    13. Fabrice Barthelemy & Gabriele Esposito & Mathieu Martin & Vincent Merlin, 2011. "Fair Apportionment in the Italian Senate : Which Reform Should Be Implemented?," THEMA Working Papers 2011-16, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    14. 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.
    15. Monisankar Bishnu & Sonali Roy, 2012. "Hierarchy of players in swap robust voting games," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(1), pages 11-22, January.
    16. Matthew Gould & Matthew D. Rablen, 2013. "Equitable Representation in the Councils of the United Nations: Theory and Application," CEDI Discussion Paper Series 13-07, Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University.
    17. Mika Widgrén, 2008. "The Impact of Council's Internal Decision-Making Rules on the Future EU," Discussion Papers 26, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    18. Leech, Dennis & Leech, Robert, 2009. "Reforming IMF and World Bank governance : in search of simplicity, transparency and democratic legitimacy in the voting rules," Economic Research Papers 271286, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    19. Fabrice Barthelemy & Mathieu Martin, 2011. "A Comparison Between the Methods of Apportionment Using Power Indices: the Case of the US Presidential Elections," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 101-102, pages 87-106.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    EU Council of Ministers; EU Constitution; qualified majority voting; voting power;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    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:ehl:lserod:24230. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.