Connected Coalition Formation and Voting Power in the Council of the European Union: An Endogenous Policy Approach. EIPA Working Paper 99/W/05

Bilal, Sanoussi and Hosli, Madeleine O. (1999) Connected Coalition Formation and Voting Power in the Council of the European Union: An Endogenous Policy Approach. EIPA Working Paper 99/W/05.

Abstract

Resorting to political economy approaches, this paper attempts to associate the industrial structure in the European Union (EU) to the coalition formation process between European member states. Using a well-known measure of relative voting power, the (normalized) Banzhaf power index, we relax the common assumption that coalitions form randomly. Instead, we adopt the standard interest group model and look at the structure of European industry, mainly in terms of industrial concentration in the EU, as an indicator of its lobbying influence on domestic politics and governments’ preferences. This, in turn, influences the political stance, and thus the coalition building process, of the different member states in the Council. We derive estimates on members’ relative influence within the Council for different policy areas in the broader framework of industry and trade, on the basis of both weighted votes and likely patterns of coalition-formation in the Council.