The conception of blocking power as a key to the understanding of the history of designing voting systems for the EU council

Abstract

Unlike the classical approach to voting power, the approach presented in this paper makes a distinction between a voter's winning and blocking power and relates the latter kind of power to the number of small-size minimal blocking coalitions the voter can form with other voters. It is shown that the concept of blocking sheds light on the designing of voting systems for EU Council of Ministers from the very beginning to the Lisbon treaty.