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.

Preface; Introduction; Part I Voting System for the Council of European Union: Is the double majority really double? The voting rules in the Lisbon Treaty, Axel Moberg; Penrose's square-root rule and the EU Council of Ministers: significance of the quota, Moshé Machover; Jagiellonian compromise – an alternative voting system for the Council of the European Union, Wojciech Slomczynski and Karol Zyczkowski; The double majority voting rule of the EU Reform Treaty as a democratic ideal for an enlarging Union: an appraisal using voting power analysis, Dennis Leech and Haris Aziz; The blocking power in voting systems, Tadeusz Sozanski; The distribution of power in the Council of Ministers of the European Union, Werner Kirsch. Part II Distribution of Power in the European Union: The distribution of power in the European cluster game, Jesús Mario Bilbao; The constitutional power of the voters in the European Parliament, Silvia Fedeli and Francesco Forte; Decision rules and intergovernmentalism in the European Union, Madeleine O. Hosli; On the relative unimportance of voting weights: observations on agenda-based voting procedures, Hannu Nurmi; Patterns of voting in the Council of Ministers of the European Union. The impact of the 2004 enlargement, Rafal Trzaskowski; Decision-making in the EU Council after the first Eastern enlargement: the relevance of the empirical findings for the voting rules, Bìla Plechanovová. Part III Allocation of Seats in the European Parliament: Degressive proportionality: composition of the European Parliament. The parabolic method, Victoriano Ramírez González; Putting citizens first: representation and power in the European Union, Friedrich Pukelsheim; Comparative analysis of several methods for determining the composition of the European Parliament, José Martínez Aroza and Victoriano Ramírez González; On bounds for allocation of seats in the European Parliament, Wojciech Slomczynski and Karol Zyczkowski; Conclusions: the system of equal influence of the citizens of the EU – the Polish proposal submitted during the 2007 Reform Treaty negotiations, Marek A. Cichocki and Ewa Osniecka-Tamecka; Index.