Tsebelis G. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

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Question 2: Regardless of who has agenda setting powers, will the outcome in the qualified

majority winset of the Council (Q(SQ)), or only in the points that command a qualified majority

over everything that the Council can do unanimously (Q(U(SQ))? König’s (1997) data contain

only cases where Q(U(SQ) is empty. In these cases, the results are located inside U(SQ) as a

expect and not inside Q(SQ).

Question 3: Is there a difference for the influence the EP has between cooperation and

Codecision I? Is this difference in favor of the EP when it has the Commission on its side and is

not confronted with a unanimous Council? The answers to both these questions are affirmative as

the empirical results of Tsebelis et. al. (2001) demonstrate.

Question 4: Has the Commission lost agenda setting powers under Codecision I or have these

powers simply being reduced compared to cooperation? Tsebelis’ et.al. (2001) data set indicates

that when the behavior of the Commission is controlled for acceptance rate of EP amendments is

higher under cooperation. The unconditional rate of acceptance of EP amendments is higher

under codecision than under cooperation because the Commission was more negative and more

influential under cooperation than under codecision.

Question 5: Do the Commission as a bureaucracy and the ECJ as the judiciary have constant

powers, do their powers over time increase, or do their powers vary as a function of legislative

procedures? There is no empirical evidence to corroborate my expectations in bureaucracies and

the judiciary in the EU. Francino produces evidence that the institutional power of the

Commission is reduced, but he does not address the point of behavioral independence of the

Commission. Stone Sweet argues for an expansion of the role of the ECJ, while Dehousse (1998)

for a reduction, however their arguments are based on constitutional decisions, not on statutory

ones.

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See the arguments I made about institutional and behavioral independence of central banks in chapter 10

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Conclusions

The EU is a complicated and fast changing polity. In fact, analysts disagree whether it

resembles a presidential or parliamentary system at any point of its recent developments. Instead

of using the similarities or differences of the EU institutions with any particular polity as the

basis of my analysis, I described EU institutions (section II) and then modeled them on the basis

of veto players theory, and came to a series of conclusions (section III), which were corroborated

by the data (section IV). My expectations regarded not only the legislative system of the EU, but

also the judiciary and the bureaucracies.

At the macro level my basic conclusions are that the EU moved from a six or nine or ten

or twelve veto player system (depending on the number of countries that participated under the

Luxembourg compromise) to a three or two collective veto player legislative system (from 1987

on). However, these collective veto players were deciding by qualified majorities each (an

explicitly stated in the Treaties majority in the Council; and a de facto qualified majority

(depending on abstentions) in the EP. As a result, policy stability is very high. The legislative

rules may increase it, or decrease it as the analysis in the second half of the third section has

shown (Figure 11.3), but we are moving around a very high level of policy stability (large core).

All the consequences of policy stability are there: complaints about the important role of

“Brussels” (the headquarters of the Commission) in all European countries, important role of the

ECJ (in a comparative perspective).

The Nice Treaty is likely to exacerbate these trends. The qualified majority in the Council

is going to increase, and it is supplemented by two more required majorities: a majority of

countries members, and a qualified majority (62%) of the people of the EU. All these features

increase the core of the Council, and therefore of the EU. In addition, more countries will enter

the Union, which is likely to produce more diversified interests, and as a result even bigger

legislative core and smaller winsets of SQ. The consequences of these changes will be an

increase in policy stability, and an increased role of the bureaucracy and the judiciary.

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I am not making a normative judgment on whether such changes are beneficial or not. I

have already stated that it depends on the position of the judge with respect to the status quo.

However, whether we are talking about behavioral the independence of bureaucrats (as my

models predict) or the institutional constraints imposed by more detailed legislation that Francino

describes, it seems that Nice has placed the EU into a heavy bureaucratization orbit.

TABLE 11.1

Three Approaches to European Integration

Intergovernmentalism Neofunctionalism Institutionalism

Are governments

the only (important)

actors?

YES NO NO

Unintended

consequences?

NO YES NO (under complete

information)

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TABLE 11.2

Precentages of different Parliamentary responses in the second round of Cooperation and

Codecision I Procedures.

COOPERATION CODECISION

# % overall % of

second

round

# % overall % of

second

round

New

Amend.

272 0.095 0.453 281 0.138 0.533

Modif.

Amend. 163

0.057

0.272

148

0.073

0.281

Reintr. “as

is” Amend.

165

0.058

0.275

0.048

0.186

Not Reint.

Amend. 2266

0.791

1511

0.741

Total

2866

2038

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FIGURE 11.1

Location of outcome under cooperation procedure in one- and two-dimensional spaces

(The EP may make a proposal acceptable by the Commission in a two dimensional space but not

in a single dimension).

SQ'

3' 4'

EP'

U(SQ)

Q(U(SQ))

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FIGURE 11.2

Parliament

Commission

Council

Left-Right

Integration

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FIGURE 11.3

409

FIGURE 11.4

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FIGURE 11.5

Integration of Unanimous Proposals

E P

2,5

-3,5

0 3,5

SQ’

Two-dimensional Euclidean Policy space from König

B-Belgium, DK-Denmark, D-Germany, E-Spain, F-France, GB-Great Britain, GR-Greece,

IR-Ireland, I-Italy, L-Luxembourg, NL-Netherlands, P-Portugal, EP-Parliament, K-Commission,

SQ–Status quo; RE-Results.

SQ’ outcome predicted by “least common denominator” theories

König, Thomas Europa auf dem Weg zum Mehrheitssystem. Gründe und Konsequenzen

nationaler und parlamentarischer Integration Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1997.

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