Power, connected coalitions, and efficiency: Challenges to the council of the European Union

This article is concerned with challenges to reforming the voting procedure s of the Council of the European Union (Eu). The next major waves of EU enl argement will cause the Union to increase to a membership of first twenty-o ne, and then twenty-six or possibly ev en more states. How does enlargement affect the Council's inherent "capacity to act" under the currently used q ualified majority voting rule? It is demonstrated here that the expected in crease in cv membership will mast likely induce a larger "status quo bias" as compared to the present situation in the Council if the crucial majority decision quota is not lowered. In addition, the article is responding to s ome criticism that has been applied against assessing the leverage of Eu go vernments in one of the Eu's most important institutions: the Council of th e EU. By resorting to techniques that capture the influence of a priori coa litions on the one hand and "connected coalitions" among EU governments on the other-applying n-person cooperative game theory-the piece illustrates h ow the assessment of relative voting leverage in the framework of weighted voting systems may be extended and applied to situations in which the speci fic distribution of members' preferences is known. These calculations are a gain relevant in the face of the upcoming rounds of Ev enlargement and proj ects for institutional reform.