The Rotating Presidency of the European Council
as a Search for Good Policies
Ken Kollman
kkollman@umich.edu
The rotating presidency for the European Council
is a curious, and unusual, political institution. Each country
in the European Union (EU) takes a turn in the presidency, for a six month
term, and the rotation is fixed by the treaties governing the Union.
The institution rotates among all fifteen countries sequentially. In this
paper I propose a computational model to study the idea of rotating the leadership
position in a decision making body. In the model, the members
of a council vote on policies using a variety of decision making institutions.
I evaluate these various institutions using utilitarian criteria.