“A Take-It-or-Leave-It Proposal with Incomplete Information: What is Parliament’s Share of the Pie Under Maastricht’s Co-Decision”

Varela, Diego. (1999) “A Take-It-or-Leave-It Proposal with Incomplete Information: What is Parliament’s Share of the Pie Under Maastricht’s Co-Decision”. In: UNSPECIFIED, Pittsburgh, PA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The existing literature has treated the conciliation endgame as one with complete information. If we add to this fact that the Council has, in the case of conciliation breakdown, the institutional prerogative to make the Parliament a take-it-or-leave-it proposal, the Council is pictured as an almighty agenda setter. Under the assumption of complete information, therefore, the European Parliament does not obtain more than the minimum acceptable offer guaranteed by its veto power. To test this prediction is an arduous task which will not be undertaken here. However, there is a secondary prediction of the complete information model, namely, that the EP’s veto will never be exercised. This prediction collides with the evidence of two parliamentary vetoes. Therefore, this paper develops an alternative model with incomplete information which takes into account of that evidence, and assesses how divergent the new predictions are as compared to those of the standard complete information model.

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