Decisions made by consensus in the Council of the European Union emerge from the coalition-building behaviour of individual governments.

Häge, Frank (2013) Decisions made by consensus in the Council of the European Union emerge from the coalition-building behaviour of individual governments. LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog (11 Jun 2013). Website.

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Abstract

Despite the use of qualified majority voting, a high percentage of decisions in the Council of the European Union are still made by consensus. Frank Häge outlines a model which can potentially explain this phenomenon. He argues that the high numbers of decisions made by consensus are in fact an unintended by-product of coalition building within the Council: states band together to form blocking coalitions, with eventual decisions reflecting a compromise between these coalitions (and therefore a consensus between all states). This explains why decisions made by consensus are still extremely common, despite the EU enlargements which have taken place since the mid-1990s.

Item Type:	Online resource (Website)
Official URL:	http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/
Additional Information:	© 2013 The Author(s)
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe)
Date Deposited:	05 Apr 2017 12:44
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 19:02
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/72603

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