The Distribution of A Priori Voting Power in the EC Council of Ministers and the European Parliament

One of the most important decision making bodies in the EC is the Council of Ministers. In that voting body the member states have different voting weights roughly in proportion to the size of their populations. This article focuses on the voting power of current and prospective member states (Finland, Norway and Sweden) utililizing the Shapley-Shubik and Banzhaf indices of voting power. As the decision rules play a crucial role in the computation of these indices, the a priori voting power distribution is considered under various decision rules ranging from simple majority to near unanimity. We also discuss the a priori voting power distribution of various political groupings in the current European Parliament and in the hypothetical parliament which would have Finland, Norway and Sweden as new members. Although thus far the real power base in the EC is the Commission, the analysis of voting power distributions in the Council of Ministers and in the parliament sheds some light upon the relative influence that various actors might have in EC decision-making processes.     

Political representation in the European Parliament

European Journal of Political Research -     

Party Behaviour in the Finnish Parliament

This article focuses on party behaviour in the Finnish Parliament. We consider the political parties as vote-seekers, office-seekers, or policy-seekers in a multiparty system. We presume that the parliamentary position of a party affects its behaviour, and that the behaviour of a party differs from one arena to another in Parliament. The party activity is measured in terms of proposed motions, reservations to committee decisions, debates and statements at plenary sessions, and roll-calls at plenary sessions. The empirical findings indicate that political parties in opposition act first and foremost as vote-seekers. Only opposition parties make reservations to committee decisions and initiate roll-calls at plenary sessions. On the other hand, the governing parties seem mainly to focus on policy-seeking.     

Federalism and the European Parliament

The European Parliament has been a source of controversy sinceits inception. Its direct election was seen as endorsing a federalstructure and political future for the European Community (laterEuropean Union). Changes in its authority and legislative powerswere seen as symptomatic of creeping federalism and the emasculationof member states' national sovereignty. The European Parliament'sconscious contribution to developing federalism and constructinga federal Europe relate to its direct election, its powers,and its proposals to hold a constitutional convention. The Anglo-Saxonmisconception of federalism is analyzed, the role of a billof rights examined, and the failures of democratic legitimacyexposed with a view to see what contribution federal bargainsmay make to close the democratic deficit and to impel a reviewof the current institutional arrangements.     

Dimensions of Politics in the European Parliament

We investigate the dimensionality of politics in the European Parliament by applying a scaling method to all roll-call votes between 1979 and 2001 in the European Parliament. Contrary to most existing studies using these methods, we are able to interpret the substantive content of the observed dimensions using exogenous measures of national party policy positions. We find that the main dimension of politics in the European Union's only elected institution is the classic left-right dimension found in domestic politics. A second dimension is also present, although to a lesser extent, which captures government-opposition conflicts as well as national and European party positions on European integration.     

The Swedish Constitution and Social Democratic Power: Measuring the Mechanical Effect of a Political Institution

Recent discussions of Swedish political change have focused on the decline of Social Democratic 'hegemony' and on the end of the 'Swedish model'. In contrast to preference– or interest –driven explanations for these developments, this paper investigates the impact of constitutional changes made in 1969 in Sweden, which included the elimination of the Upper House or First Chamber of the Swedish parliament and the introduction of a more directly proportional electoral system. Using a simulation model, the actual electoral results from 1969 through 1994 were plugged into the formulas set forth by the old constitutional rules, in order to generate the number of parliamentary seats each party would have received under the old system. This simulation shows that the Social Democratic Party would have received a significantly larger share of parliamentary seats under the old constitutional rules than under the current constitution. Thus one can conclude that the new constitution decreased Social Democratic power in Sweden.     

Swedish Reaction to the Assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme

Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead, on a street in central Stockholm, on his way home from the cinema late in the evening of 28 February 1986. The Swedish public reacted with grief and horror. The emotional reactions to Prime Minister Palme's assassination were greater than expected. However, placed in an international context they are, nevertheless, relatively weak. In the analysis, the situation six and four years after the assassination will be compared with the situation three weeks after the event. The focus is on: what role, if any, the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme has played in the way in which Swedes and immigrants express their views on a number of important issues related to the murder and what effect, if any, it might have on the Swedish political culture and on the trust of the Swedes in the political and judicial system. The final argument that can be presented from this study of the connection between exposure to a dramatic event, such as the murder of a prime minister, and children's and adults' political values, is that the emotional effect of the assassination fades away fairly quickly and is replaced by a much more vague and unclear structural effect related to the total impact of the assassination seen as a dramatic event of national importance. This kind of structural effect on the political culture in a country can never be clearly described and analysed for the simple reason that an effect of this magnitude is almost impossible to control and isolate from other experiences.     

Tax authority to the European Parliament?

In this paper we analyze whether countries of the EC community should plead for a decentralized system to finance the European funds rather than using a uniform tax imposed by the European parliament. The analysis is within a multistage game-theoretic framework in which the implication of the financing system of a confederation on the investment behavior in the respective states is considered. The paper is in the tradition of the literature which claims that from a view of global efficiency property-rights structures inducing ex-post efficient allocations may be worse than a system leading to an ex-post inefficient allocation. For this specific economic issue we elucidate the tradeoff between incentive effect and distributional policy. Especially we demonstrate that rather homogeneous countries benefit by installing a central tax institution. If the countries are rather heterogeneous, the countries may have opposing interests with respect to the answer of the question which is presented in the title. It is possible that the “high-developed” country prefers to install a central tax authority while the “low-developed” country does not. However, in general the reverse ordering which is more in line with our intuition results.     

The European Parliament elections

The recent European Parliament elections did not produce the long-feared triumph of illiberal anti-European Union forces, and indicate that voters remain strongly attached to the European project. Yet they highlighted and contributed to increasingly fragmented and unstable national and supranational European politics, suggesting that the EU may become a less effective transatlantic partner and security actor.     

Party Cohesion in the Danish Parliament during the 1970s*

The Danish parliamentary parties have traditionally been known for their high degree of cohesion. Recent social and political changes may, however, justify a hypothesis on a decline of party cohesion. In this paper two conflicting hypotheses on party cohesion in the Danish Parliament during the 1970s are formulated and empirically tested. The application of different operationalizations of party cohesion all give the same result: The hypothesis on a decline of party cohesion is false, whereas the hypothesis on a high degree of party cohesion is true. Party cohesion is as high in the 1970s as in previous decades, and the new parties gaining representation during the 1970s are as cohesive as the old, well established parties.     

Swedish intelligence in the Second World War

Henry C. Clausen and Bruce Lee, Pearl Harbor: Final Judgment (New York: Crown Books, 1992). Pp.485. $25.00.