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Under the third set of voting weights (75, 12.5, 12.5 percent) the power of the U.S. and
Japan to block action is much greater than that of the other Council members. These two large vote
holders’ PTB values quickly converge on 1.0 as the threshold is raised. The smaller vote holders
have significantly less power to block at the lower majority decision rules.
(Figure 3 about here)
These three figures indicate clearly that the threshold chosen will make a considerable
difference on individual members’ abilities to block action by the Council. The current veto holders
in the Council would have less overall ability to block action than they have under current rules. The
other members would for the most part have more than their current PTB value of .099. In other
words, under weighted voting the capacity to block action will be more evenly distributed across
members of the Council.
Operating under the current rules, the power to initiate action for permanent members
is .0266 and for non-permanent members it is .0026. The power to initiate action using
Schwartzberg’s original EQ formula is displayed in Figure 4. Even using a simple majority decision
rule, the highest PTI value is about .32. At the 60 percent threshold even the smallest vote holder
has a PTI value that is several times larger than under current rules. For the U.S., its ability to
initiate action would be higher under this scenario than it is currently as long as the decision rule
remains under 72 percent. Put differently, the U.S. would have more influence in forming winning
(Figure 4 about here)
coalitions than it does at present. PTI values quickly converge to near zero as the decision rule is
increased. Comparing the PTI values in Figure 4 to the PTB values in Figure 1 reveals that there is
an unmistakable trade-off between being able to block proposals and being able to successfully
initiate proposals.
Convention