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11 - Evidence with insight: what models contribute to EU research
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- By Gerald Schneider, University of Konstanz, Germany, Bernard Steunenberg, Leiden University, Mika Widgrén, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland
- Edited by Robert Thomson, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Frans N. Stokman, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands, Christopher H. Achen, Princeton University, New Jersey, Thomas König
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- Book:
- The European Union Decides
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 14 September 2006, pp 299-316
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The Treaties of Maastrict, Amsterdam, and Nice are milestones of European integration. In each case, the negotiation and ratification processes attracted widespread media and popular attention. More recently, the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe also drew sustained interest from broad sectors of European society until it failed ratification in several member states during 2005. Academics are drawn to stirring events just as the press and public are, and thus many political scientists have written engagingly about the ‘grand bargains’ embodied in the successive EU treaties (e.g. Moravcsik 1998).
Day to day, however, the business of the EU does not make front-page headlines. Like any government, the EU spends most of its time deciding routine matters, such as the wording of health warnings on tobacco products or the funding of student exchanges in Europe. Indeed, both tobacco label and student exchange decisions appear in the data set used in this book. The EU's own organs decide these issues—the Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Parliament (EP). Mid-level civil servants and ordinary Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) may play critical roles. Prime ministers and chancellors, who loom so large in the grand bargains, do not.
In this volume, we have directed our energies toward the explanation of everyday EU decisions. We make no apology for doing so. Although some legislative acts are merely technical correctives or minor bureaucratic rule-making, the great majority of the decisions examined here affect the lives of many Europeans.
9 - Beyond informal compromise: testing conditional formal procedures of EU decision-making
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- By Mika Widgrén, Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland, Antti Pajala, University of Turku
- Edited by Robert Thomson, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Frans N. Stokman, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands, Christopher H. Achen, Princeton University, New Jersey, Thomas König
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- Book:
- The European Union Decides
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 14 September 2006, pp 239-263
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Quantitative analysis of European Union decision-making can be divided into two distinct traditions. First, there is a camp representing the cooperative approach; this includes the power index approach, the compromise model and cooperative bargaining and coalition formation models. A common feature of these models is that they do not consider explicitly how the outcome of the decision-making process is arrived at. Instead, it is assumed that a compromise among the actors is reached that is a result of their formal or informal capabilities, their information-gathering capacities, and/or the interaction and coalition formation among them. Using rather general assumptions about these elements, the cooperative approach derives solution concepts that also give predictions of decision outcomes.
As noted in Chapter 4, many studies of governmental decisions divide the process into two stages. The first stage is that of compromise-seeking or coalition-formation and has very few formal rules. The second stage consists of the application of the decision-making procedure, where there are explicit written rules and the sequence of moves is specified. The co-operative approach corresponds roughly with the first stage. It makes either no assumptions concerning the second stage at all, or it (implicitly) assumes that all aspects of the second stage of relevance to compromises or coalition formation have been taken into account during the first stage of the process. This approach also presumes that the compromises made in the first stage are binding.
10 - Power in the Design of Constitutional Rules
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- By Mika Widgrén
- Edited by Gabrielle Demange, DELTA, Paris, Myrna Wooders, University of Warwick
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- Book:
- Group Formation in Economics
- Published online:
- 02 February 2010
- Print publication:
- 10 January 2005, pp 312-334
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Summary
Introduction
Influence is a crucial element in any decision-making institution. The role of the decision-making rules or, more generally, institution design, is to affect power relations in institutions where decisions are made.
Quantitative analysis of decision-making rules can be divided into two parts: one based on cooperative games and the other on noncooperative games. Recently, there has been a lively debate between two schools of thought on the appropriate tools and approaches for assessing and designing different constitutional decision-making rules.
Scholars of cooperative game theory apply different power indices to assess the effects of different decision-making rules on actors' influence in decision making. The considered agents have no particular preferences and form winning coalitions that then implement unspecified policies. Individual chances of being part of and influencing a winning coalition are then measured by a power index. The actual distribution of power can be evaluated by defining some desirable distribution of actors' power.
The second approach uses noncooperative game theory to analyze the impact of explicit decision procedures and given preferences over a well-defined policy space. In this approach, conclusions are based on equilibrium analysis. This requires more detailed information regarding the players' preferences. As such, the noncooperative approach is not suitable for the design of constitutional rules, but by considering several realizations of actors' preference configurations, one is able to draw conclusions on the performance of the constitutional rules.
5 - Voting power and control in the EU: the impact of the EFTA entrants
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- By Mika Widgrén
- Edited by Richard Baldwin, Université de Genève, Pertti Haapararanta, Helsinki School of Economics, Jaakko Kiander, Labour Institute for Economic Research, Helsinki
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- Book:
- Expanding Membership of the European Union
- Published online:
- 05 November 2011
- Print publication:
- 27 October 1995, pp 113-142
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Summary
Introduction
National aspects and the balance of national voting power in the EU play an important role as long as the governments have direct influence in the decision making process. The decisive body of the Union is the Council of Ministers where Germany, Italy, France and the UK have 10 votes each; Spain 8 votes; the Netherlands, Greece, Portugal and Belgium 5 votes each; Denmark and Ireland 3 votes each and Luxembourg 2 votes. Decisions are made mainly by the qualified majority for which 54 votes out of 76 were required before the EFTA countries' entry. Among the new entrant countries, Austria and Sweden have 4 votes and Finland has 3 votes. The qualified majority in an expanded EU is made up of 62 votes out of 87.
The Council of Ministers offers a nice example for cooperative game theory, since it is a weighted majority game with an asymmetric decision making rule. Since 1986, when the Single European Act came into force, the role of qualified majority voting has become more important. Recently there have been pressures towards simple majority or so-called double majority voting in the Council, due to the fear of Union's weakening abilities to operate after the enlargement.
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse national influence in the EU. The concept of ‘influence’ is divided into direct effect on outcomes of votings and to control (see section 2).