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

Laurent Bouton, Aniol Llorente-Saguer and Frederic Malherbe

No 10408, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Consider a group of agents whose goal is 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 propose a simple voting system -majority rule with veto power- 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 EU institutions and could guide policy reforms in cases such as juries in the US.

Keywords: Pareto criterion; Unanimity rule; Veto power; Information aggregation; Constructive abstention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mic and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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