Policymaking, Comitology, and the Balance of Power in The European Union

from cases where the group of "truly European players" (i.e., Parliament and Commission), on the one hand, and the group of"national players" (Council members and state representatives forming the committees), on the other hand, are more likely to have similar preferences within the group and divergent preferences between groups, zl Given these simplifying assumptions, the number of feasible preference constellations (including possible status quo ante) is finite and denoted by N. This number depends on the length of the interval over which the ideal points are distributed. For example, given an interval of length 3~, there are four possible values that the ideal points may take, viz. some arbitrary number x, x + ~, x + 2~, and x + 3~. In general, if the ideal points are distributed over an interval of length ruS, then the number of possible values that an ideal point may take is given by n + 1. Let ~j(p), j = 1..N, be the equilibrium outcome for a specific implementation procedure, given a preference constellation j, as defined by Propositions 1 through 3. We can define the mean distance between the outcomes of the policy implementation game and the ideal point of a player i by