Qualified Majority Voting and Power Indices: A Further Response to Johnston

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 26, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 595-597

  Morriss, Peter ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84996230085     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400007626     Document Type: Article

References (8)

1. R. J. Johnston, ‘The Conflict over Qualified Majority Voting in the European Union Council of Ministers: An Analysis of the UK Negotiating Stance Using Power Indices’, British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995), 245-54. Page numbers in the text between these numbers refer to this article.
2. Geoffrey M. Garrett, Iain McLean and Moshe Machover, ‘Power, Power Indices and Blocking Power: A Comment on Johnston’, British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995) 563-8; R. J. Johnston, ‘Can Power be Reduced to a Quantitative Index-And If So, Which One? A Response to Garrett, McLean and Machover’, British Journal of Political Science, 25 (1995), 568-72. Page numbers in the text between these numbers refer to these articles.
3. In the event, Norway voted against joining the EU, which was therefore expanded to fifteen countries; but this does not affect the issue that Johnston addresses of whether Major's stand at the time was sensible.
4. Strictly speaking, you can have the same amount of power as another voter, even though you have more votes (as when voters have 3,2,2 votes, with the required majority being 4), but you cannot have more votes and less power than another.
5. Originally presented in J. F. Banzhaf, ‘Weighted Voting Doesn't Work: A Mathematical Analysis’, Rutgers Law Review, 19 (1965), 317-43.
6. See Peter Morriss, Power: A Philosophical Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), Part IV. The whole of this part (pp. 154-97) considers mathematical power indices; but possibly my subtitle has served to hide this.
7. See Morriss, Power, pp. 184-6, for a more exhaustive demonstration.
8. Garrett et al. point out that such a negative policy might have been unwise-p. 564 fn. 4-but they accept that it is a common ground for this discussion.