Self Enforcing Voting in International Organizations

Giovanni Maggi and Massimo Morelli ()

No 10102, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Some international organizations are governed by unanimity rule, some others by a majority system. Still others have moved from one system to the other over time. The existing voting models, which generally assume that decisions made by voting are perfectly enforceable, have a difficult time explaining the observed variation in governance mode, and in particular the widespread occurrence of the unanimity system. We present a model whose main departure from standard voting models is that there is no external enforcement mechanism: each country is sovereign and cannot be forced to follow the collective decision, or in other words, the voting system must be self-enforcing. The model yields unanimity as the optimal system for a wide range of parameters, and delivers rich predictions on the variation in the mode of governance, both across organizations and over time.

JEL-codes: D70 F02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
Note: ITI
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Maggi, Giovanni and Massimo Morelli. "Self-Enforcing Voting In International Organizations," American Economic Review, 2006, v96(4,Sep), 1137-1158.

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Journal Article: Self-Enforcing Voting in International Organizations (2006)
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