Reweighting the votes in the council of ministers (double simple majority voting rule and the nice compromise)

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
František Turnovec
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Majority Voting ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Member States ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Council Of Ministers ◽  
The Eu

In this paper we provide an analysis of the Commission's proposal of so called double simple majority rule (when to pass a decision simple majority of Member States and at the same time simple majority of total population has to be reached) for the voting in the Council of Ministers of the EU. In our evaluation we are using an a priori voting power methodology to measure an influence of the Member States before and after extension of the EU. In the closing part of the paper we shortly compare the double simple majority rule to the compromise approved by the 2000 Nice Summit of the EU.

When Do Conflicting Parties Share Political Power?

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Battaglini ◽  
Lydia Mechtenberg
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Small Extent ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Proportional Rule ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Electoral Outcome ◽  
Costly Punishment ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Do So

AbstractWe conduct a laboratory experiment to study the incentives of a privileged group (the “yellows”) to share political power with another group (the “blues”). The yellows collectively choose the voting rule for a general election: a simple-majority rule that favors them, or a proportional rule. In two treatments, the blues can use a costly punishment option. We find that the yellows share power voluntarily only to a small extent, but they are more inclined to do so under the threat of punishment, despite the fact that punishments are not sub-game perfect. The blue group conditions punishments both on the voting rule and the electoral outcome.

scholarly journals Should Jurors Deliberate?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brishti Guha
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Binary Decision ◽  
Board Of Director ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Individual Decisions ◽  
The Cost

AbstractDoes the accuracy of verdicts improve or worsen if individual jurors on a panel are barred from deliberating prior to casting their votes? I study this question in a model where jurors can choose to exert costly effort to improve the accuracy of their individual decisions. I find that, provided the cost of effort is not too large, it is better to allow jurors to deliberate if jury size exceeds a threshold. For panels smaller than this threshold, it is more effective to instruct jurors to vote on the basis of their private information, without deliberations, and to use a simple majority rule to determine the collective decision (regardless of the voting rule used with deliberations). The smaller the cost of paying attention, the larger the threshold above which the switch to allowing deliberations becomes optimal. However, if the unanimity rule had to be maintained under the no-deliberations system, it would be better to allow deliberation. The results apply to binary decision making in any committee where the committee members incur some effort in reviewing the evidence. Examples are arbitration panels and tenure and promotion committees and some board of director meetings on issues such as whether to dismiss a CEO. As an extension I consider the case where jurors differ in their costs of effort.

From Unanimity to Consensus: An Analysis of the Negotiations at the EU's Constitutional Convention

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas König ◽  
Jonathan B. Slapin
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
Member States ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Bargaining Position ◽  
Domestic Constraints ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Eu

In spite of the recent failure of two referendums, the drafting of a constitution for the second biggest economic power in the world, the European Union (EU), remains a major event in the history of European integration. Whether the constitution or a revised version of it will come into force or not, several important questions emerge. How did an increased number of twentyfive member states reach a conclusion, whereas a lower number of fifteen had failed at previous intergovernmental attempts? In particular, how did the constitutional convention differ from previous intergovernmental conferences (iGCs) at which the EU exclusively bargained its treaty documents in the past? How can one explain the outcomes of the convention, which proposes redistribution of power and resources among twenty-five or more member states? This article uses the positions of the delegates of the EU's constitutional convention to examine bargaining in a setting with few formal rules. The authors use theoretical insights from a spatial model and new survey data to determine the implicit voting rule used at the convention. They find that the convention differed from previous IGCs because the convention was governed by consensus, whereas previous EU bargains on treaties had always required unanimous support. The level of consensus was higher than simple majority rule but lower than unanimity. Since this threshold impacted who won and who lost at the convention, the authors also examine the sources of bargaining power, such as delegates' distance to the status quo, distance to the median, population size, and domestic constraints. The results confirm several findings in the EU bargaining and two-level game literature, for example, that actors closer to the status quo hold a stronger bargaining position and that actors from larger member states are neither more likely nor less likely to win at the negotiating table than are actors from smaller states. The findings on the irrelevance of domestic constraints also indicate why the popular votes in France and the Netherlands failed.

scholarly journals Persuading Voters

2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (11) ◽  
pp. 3590-3605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Alonso ◽  
Odilon CÂmara
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Optimal Experiment ◽  
Symmetric Information ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Policy Experiment ◽  
Public Signal ◽  
Voting Model

In a symmetric information voting model, an individual (politician) can influence voters' choices by strategically designing a policy experiment (public signal). We characterize the politician's optimal experiment. With a nonunanimous voting rule, she exploits voters' heterogeneity by designing an experiment with realizations targeting different winning coalitions. Consequently, under a simple-majority rule, a majority of voters might be strictly worse off due to the politician's influence. We characterize voters' preferences over electoral rules and provide conditions for a majority of voters to prefer a supermajority (or unanimity) voting rule, in order to induce the politician to supply a more informative experiment. (JEL D72, D83)

Institution-Induced Stability

2019 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Shepsle
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Lewis Carroll ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Technical Literature ◽  
Marquis De Condorcet ◽  
Charles Dodgson

Simple majority rule is badly behaved. This is one of the earliest lessons learned by political scientists in the positive political theory tradition. Discovered and rediscovered by theorists over the centuries (including, famously, the Majorcan Franciscan monk Raymon Llull in the thirteenth century, the Marquis de Condorcet in the eighteenth, the Reverend Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in the eighteenth, and Duncan Black in the twentieth), the method of majority rule cannot be counted on to produce a rational collective choice. In many circumstances (made precise in the technical literature), it is very likely (a claim also made precise) that whatever choice is produced will suffer the property of not being “best” in the preferences of all majorities: for any candidate alternative, there will always exist another alternative that some majority prefers to it. This chapter suggests that while a collection of preferences often cannot provide a collectively “best” choice, institutional arrangements, which restrict comparisons of alternatives, may allow majority rule to function more smoothly. That is, where equilibrium induced by preferences alone may fail to exist, institutional structure may induce stability.

scholarly journals The EU after Brexit: Key Geopolitical and Geo-Economic Challenges

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petr YAKOVLEV
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
European Council ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Union History ◽  
The Eu

The decision on Britain’s secession from the European Union, taken by the British Parliament and agreed by London and Brussels, divided the Union history into “before” and “after”. Not only will the remaining member states have to “digest” the political, commercial, economic and mental consequences of parting with one of the largest partners. They will also have to create a substantially new algorithm for the functioning of United Europe. On this path, the EU is confronted with many geopolitical and geo-economic challenges, which should be answered by the new leaders of the European Commission, European Council, and European Parliament.

Country-by-Country Reporting and Other Financial Transparency Measures Affecting the European Union

2021 ◽  
pp. 132-157
Author(s):  
Petr Janský ◽  
Andres Knobel ◽  
Markus Meinzer ◽  
Tereza Palanská ◽  
Miroslav Palanský
Keyword(s):  
Information Exchange ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Cayman Islands ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Automatic Information ◽  
Financial Secrecy ◽  
The Eu

The EU faces large amounts of financial secrecy supplied to it by secrecy jurisdictions. In this chapter, we use the Bilateral Financial Secrecy Index to quantify which jurisdictions supply most secrecy to EU Member States. The chapter assesses the progress of two recent EU policy efforts to tackle financial secrecy: automatic exchange of country-by-country reporting (CbCR) data and black and grey list of non-cooperative jurisdictions. It is found that 34 per cent of the financial secrecy faced by the EU is supplied by other Member States, whose a priori exclusion from the blacklisting exercise reveals its fundamental flaw. Further 13 per cent is supplied by the EU’s dependencies, mainly the UK’s Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Guernsey. The jurisdictions that supply the most secrecy not covered by automatic information exchange of CbCR data are the British Virgin Islands, United States, and Curacao. Finally the chapter discusses policy recommendations that stem from our analysis.

Democratic Federalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-138
Author(s):  
Robert P. Inman ◽  
Daniel L. Rubinfeld
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
National Government ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Simple Majority ◽  
Simple Majority Rule ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
National Legislature

This chapter details the likely economic, democratic, and rights performance of a decentralized national legislature with representatives elected from geographically specified local districts. The national legislature is assigned responsibility for national public goods and services and national regulations. Decisions in the legislature are made by simple majority rule. Independent local governments continue to be responsible for important local services, perhaps provided concurrently with the national government. On the dimensions of democratic participation and the protection of rights and liberties, Democratic Federalism is likely to do well, provided all citizens are represented in the legislature. It is on the dimension of economic efficiency that legislature-only Democratic Federalism is most likely to fall short.

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