Modernization Without Change: Decision-Making Process in the Mercosur Parliament

This article analyzes the role of Mercosur's Parliament within Mercosur’s institutional design and decision-making process by associating its institutional arrangements to potential outcomes over representativeness. Generally, it discusses how representative Mercosur’s chosen mechanism for ruling seats in its Parliament, the so-called “citizen representation”, is and how that might affect coordination trends and solutions concerning political conflicts. Hence, the article investigates such mechanism in terms of its consequences for representativeness. The method relies on a Game Theoretical perspective through the application of the Banzhaf Index, which seeks to precisely measure the power of each player as their capacity to influence decisions. The article shows that, although the criteria used by the “citizen representation” is more representative than the previously used mechanism (in which all of Mercosur’s member-states had the same number of seats) in terms of the actual population within Mercosur, not all the changes brought by the mechanism are an advance when it comes to democratic participation. Brazil will be the most powerful in influencing the final decision once the mechanism is fully implemented; Argentina, in turn, will have the same amount of power in influencing the final outcome than will have Venezuela even though its population is 30% larger than the latter.本文旨在分析南方共同市场（Mercosur）议会在南方共同市场制度架构与决策进程中的角色，通过将其制度安排与代表性维度的潜在结果相结合展开研究。本文整体探讨南方共同市场所选定的议会席位分配机制——即所谓"公民代表制"（citizen representation）的代表性程度，以及该机制可能如何影响政治冲突相关的协调趋势与解决方案。因此，本文围绕该机制对代表性的影响展开研究。本研究采用博弈论（Game Theory）视角，通过运用班扎夫权力指数（Banzhaf Index）进行分析——该指数旨在精准衡量各博弈参与方的权力，即其影响决策的能力。本文研究表明，尽管以南方共同市场成员国实际人口为基准的"公民代表制"分配标准，相较于此前所有成员国席位数量均等的旧机制更具代表性，但该机制所带来的诸多变革并非均能推动民主参与层面的进步。该机制全面落地实施后，巴西将成为影响最终决策的最具权力的一方；而阿根廷虽人口比委内瑞拉多出30%，但其影响最终结果的权力却与委内瑞拉相当。