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Voting Power in a Sequence of Cooperative Games:The Case of EU Procedures

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Power Indices and Coalition Formation
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Abstract

Probabilistic measures of a priori voting power are useful tools to assess actors’ influence on collective decision-making either for the purpose of designing a voting organ or to model particular policy cases. This paper makes an attempt to reduce a dynamic voting process into a cooperative voting game and uses the EU as an example. By a subsequent specialization of power indices we are able to quantify, for instance, to what extent the development of the decision-making procedures on the EU has changed the division of power among its main organs.

The very first draft of this paper was written during Mika Widgrén’s visit at IRES in May 1996. He is grateful for the hospitality and the innovative atmosphere provided by IRES. The authors are grateful for the editors’ and referees’ comments which have significantly improved the paper during the process. The discussions and comments during the workshop “Group Decision-making and Power Indices” in Jozefow Poland 20–27 July 1996 and European Public Choice Meetings in Prague 2-5 April 1997, American Political Science Association Meeting in Washington DC 28–31 August 1997 and seminars at the University of Helsinki, TRES, University of Hamburg and CERGE-EI have also been valuable. This research has been supported by a grant “Actions de Recherche Concertées” 93/98–162 of the Ministery of Scientific Research of the Belgian French Speaking Community.

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Laruelle, A., Widgrén, M. (2001). Voting Power in a Sequence of Cooperative Games:The Case of EU Procedures. In: Holler, M.J., Owen, G. (eds) Power Indices and Coalition Formation. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6221-1_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6221-1_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-4893-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-6221-1

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