Get Rid of Unanimity: The Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power

Laurent Bouton, Aniol Llorente-Saguer and Frederic Malherbe

No 20417, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A group of agents wants to reform the status quo if and only if this is Pareto improving. Agents have private information and may have common or private objectives, which creates a tension between information aggregation and minority protection. We analyze a simple voting system - majority rule with veto power (Veto) - that essentially resolves this tension, for it combines the advantageous properties of both majority and unanimity rules. We argue that our results shed new light on the evolution of voting rules in the EU institutions and could help to inform debates about policy reforms in cases such as juries in the US.

JEL-codes: D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cta, nep-mic and nep-pol
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Laurent Bouton & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Frédéric Malherbe, 2018. "Get Rid of Unanimity Rule: The Superiority of Majority Rules with Veto Power," Journal of Political Economy, vol 126(1), pages 107-149.

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Working Paper: Get Rid of Unanimity: The Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power (2015)
Working Paper: Get Rid of Unanimity: The Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power (2014)
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