Measures of Power in the European Union
January 2004
Notes:
The NBI is the normalized Banzhaf Index, which is a measure of power that is based only on the number of votes and the majority threshold.
The Spatial Shapley-Owen Value is a measure of power that we have developed building on the work of Shapley and Owen.
This index considers the countries' preferences in addition to their number of votes and the threshold majority.
References and websites
- Here is the current draft of our paper"Who has the power in the EU" (pdf)
by Jason Barr and Francesco Passarelli, December 2004.
Abstract: The European Union (EU) is facing the challenge of enlargement to almost
double its current size. This change has strong implications for the balance of power among member
states. Building on the work of Shapley (1977) and Owen (1972), we present a measure of power
that is based on players' preferences and number of votes. We then apply this measure to the
current and future EU states to see who wields the most power now and who is likely to wield power
after enlargement. Further we show how a country's power can change based on the preferences of the
agenda setter, which, in this case, is the European Commission.
JEL Classification: C71, D72, D78
Keywords: Power Indices, European Union, Principal Components
- A talk on Power in the EU (March 2004) Power Point Slides
- Our email addresses:
Francesco Passarelli: francesco.passarelli@uni-bocconi.it
Jason Barr: jmbarr@andromeda.rutgers.edu
- A web-based calculator of
power measures.
- A list of power-related websites.