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The Conflict over Qualified Majority Voting in the European Union Council of Ministers: An Analysis of the UK Negotiating Stance Using Power Indices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

R. J. Johnston
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Extract

Conflict within the British Conservative Party over the European Union provided a great deal of copy for media political coverage during 1992–94. It was undoubtedly responsible for severely damaging the prime minister's reputation within his party and the country. In July 1993, he could only achieve ratification of the Maastricht Treaty by making voting for it an issue of confidence in the House of Commons, thereby obtaining the support of most ‘Eurosceptic’ Conservative MPs. Nine months later, failure to achieve the United Kingdom's goal regarding voting procedures in the Council of Ministers following enlargement of the EU in 1995 led to several calls for his resignation from among his own party's MPs, including one in the House itself.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 245 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Luxembourg has thereby always been over-represented. Its current population of 400,000 gives it one vote to every 200,000 people, compared to one to every 5.75 million in France, to every 5.69 million in Italy, and to every 5.79 million in the United Kingdom. Since reunification, Germany has been under-represented: it now has one vote to every 9.06 million people. The ratios for the other countries are: Spain 1:4.89 million; Belgium 1:2.0 million; Greece 1:2.06 million; Netherlands 1:3.04 million; Portugal 1:1.96 million; Denmark 1:1.73 million; and Ireland 1:1.17 million. The average for the entire EU is 1:4.56 million. The proposed allocations to the new entrants in 1995 give an overall ratio of 1:4.13 million – the figures for the individual countries are Austria 1:1.98 million; Sweden 1:2.15 million; Finland 1:1.67 million; and Norway 1:1.43 million. For an early discussion of power in the Council, see Brams, S. J. and Affuso, P. J., ‘New Paradoxes of Voting Power on the EC Council of Ministers’, Electoral Studies, 4 (1985), 135–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 In the event, referendums in these countries meant that all but Norway wanted to join.

3 The actual issue over which the British government was concerned was far from clear. The statement by Baroness Chalker (a Foreign Office Minister) to the House of Lords on 28 March 1994 (Hansard, House of Lords, 28 March 1994, p.845) indicated that ‘Even where the treaty specifies qualified majority voting – for single market legislation, for example – the UK retains the right to continue discussions indefinitely when our vital national issues are at stake. That right – the so-called Luxembourg Compromise – is not affected by the debate over QMV’.

4 For introductions see Brams, S. J., Game Theory and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1975)Google Scholar and Brams, S. J., Negotiation Games: Applying Game Theory to Bargaining and Arbitration (New York: Routledge, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 A further index, developed by Shapley and Shubik is sometimes used (see Shapley, L. S. and Shubik, M., ‘A Method of Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System’, American Political Science Review, 48 (1954), 787–92).CrossRefGoogle ScholarBrams, (Negotiation Games, 1990, p. 229)Google Scholar claims that it ‘is based on a rather implausible model of coalition formation’, however, which is an opinion I share: in any case the Shapley-Shubik index is nonlinearly related to the Banzhaf index.

6 Brams, (Negotiation Games, p. 232)Google Scholar calls this the Banzhaf measure of relative power, after Banzhaf, J. F. III, ‘Weighted Voting Doesn't Work: A Mathematical Analysis’, Rutgers Law Review, 19 (2) (1965), 317–43.Google Scholar

7 Brams, (Negotiation Games, p. 233).Google Scholar Brams calls this the ‘Johnston measure of relative power’, after Johnston, R. J., ‘On the Measurement of Power: Some Reactions to Laver’, Environment and Planning A, 10 (1978), 907–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar He argues (p. 230) that the Johnston index is superior to Banzhaf's because it ‘distinguishes being critical in a winning coalition when one is uniquely so and when one shares this critical role with other actors, in which case one's power is proportionately reduced’.

8 Indeed, excluding Luxembourg, there is an inverse relationship between a country's size and its power, with both indices and both qualified majority figures. Further analyses and simulations suggest that this somewhat surprising relationship is particular to that configuration of votes and majority figure. If the QMV is set at around 50 percent of the votes, there is no relationship between a country's size and its power on either index. As the size of the QMV increases, so the relative power of each country becomes less variable (for JP, with QMV at 23 the range is 0.42−0.76; with QMV at 27, it is 0.47−0.72). Further analyses show that this trend continues as QMV increases: the larger the value of QMV the greater the probability that one of the large countries is crucial to a coalition. On instability of voting indices, see Johnston, R. J., ‘Political Geography and Political Power’, Munich Social Science Review, No. 3 (1978), 5–31.Google Scholar

9 Of course, none of those four ‘potential allies’ supported the British stance over the QMV. Nor did they back British opposition to the appointment of ‘federalist’ Jean-Luc Dehaene as President of the European Commission at the Corfu Summit in June 1994.