Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

Citation

Tsebelis, G. (2002). Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book has an introduction, eleven chapters in four parts, a conclusion, a bibliography and an index, about 300 pages in all. Its aim, in the publisher's words, is a new understanding of how governments are structured. Familiar classifications such as parliamentary or presidential, and two-party or multiparty, often fail to give useful insight; the real differences between political systems lie, Tsebelis contends, in how far they give political actors veto power over policy choices. Drawing on game theory, he builds a scheme for classifying governments on that basis. The central proposition is that more veto players, or greater ideological distance between them, increases policy stability and makes departures from the status quo harder. The first part develops the theory, and the later parts test its implications with data sets from advanced industrialised countries and with an analysis of legislation in the European Union.

Introduction

The introduction (pp. 1–16) sets out the problem with the usual classifications of political systems and presents the veto players approach as an alternative.

Part I: Veto Players Theory

Chapter 1: Individual Veto Players

The first theory chapter introduces the individual veto player, an actor whose agreement is required for a change in the status quo.

Chapter 2: Collective Veto Players

The second chapter extends the idea to veto players that are themselves collective actors, which is what lets the theory be applied to institutions made up of many members.

Part II: Veto Players and Institutional Analysis

Chapter 3: Regimes: Nondemocratic, Presidential, and Parliamentary

The theory is applied to the main regime types. Because the framework counts veto players rather than relying on the traditional labels, it can place nondemocratic, presidential and parliamentary regimes in one scheme.

Chapter 4: Governments and Parliaments

This chapter applies the framework to the relation between governments and parliaments.

Chapter 5: Referendums

Chapter 5 asks how referendums fit into an account built on veto players.

Chapter 6: Federalism, Bicameralism, and Qualified Majorities

The last chapter of Part II treats three institutional arrangements together, federal structure, second chambers and supermajority rules, in terms of how each changes the set of veto players.

Part III: Policy Effects of Veto Players

Chapters 7–8: Legislation; Macroeconomic Policies

Part III turns from institutions to their policy consequences, first for legislation and then for macroeconomic policies.

Part IV: Systemic Effects of Veto Players

Chapters 9–10: Government Stability; Judiciary and Bureaucracies

The publisher's summary says policy stability bears on judicial and bureaucratic independence and, in parliamentary systems, on government instability. These two chapters take those effects in turn.

Chapter 11: Veto Players Analysis of European Union Institutions

The last numbered chapter, the longest in the book (pp. 248–282), applies the framework to EU institutions and legislation.

Conclusion

The conclusion (pp. 283–290) draws the argument together.

Key Concepts

Part I: Theory

• Veto player: an individual or collective actor whose agreement is needed to change the status quo.
• Individual and collective veto players: the two forms the theory treats in Chapters 1 and 2.
• Policy stability: the outcome predicted to rise with the number of veto players and with their ideological distance.

Parts II–IV: Application

• Regime types: nondemocratic, presidential and parliamentary regimes, compared in Chapter 3 through veto players.
• Federalism, bicameralism and qualified majorities: institutions analysed in Chapter 6.
• Judicial and bureaucratic independence, government instability: effects the publisher links to policy stability.
• European Union institutions: the empirical setting of Chapter 11.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• One framework for many institutions. The publisher's central claim is that the same concept classifies regimes, party systems, legislatures and federal arrangements; the table of contents, with chapters on regimes, referendums and federalism within a single scheme, shows how far the author carries it.
• Theory first, then tests. The structure goes from two theory chapters to institutional analysis and then to policy and systemic effects, so each prediction can be traced back to the definitions in Part I. The publisher states that the propositions of the first part are tested on data from advanced industrialised countries and on EU legislation.
• Clear organising claim. The proposition that more veto players, or more distant ones, means more policy stability is easy to state and to apply, and the effects on courts, bureaucracies and government stability give it breadth.
• Recognition from the field. The publisher quotes Gianfranco Pasquino of the University of Bologna calling it the most original theory for understanding the dynamics of contemporary regimes, in the preface to the Italian edition.

Limitations

• Formal and spatial. The theory rests on game theory and on a spatial picture of actors' positions, so readers need to be comfortable with that style of argument to follow the first two chapters.
• Scope of the evidence. The publisher describes the tests as using data sets from advanced industrialised countries and the European Union, so the empirical case is stronger for those settings than for other regime types, although Chapter 3 discusses nondemocratic regimes.
• Not an introduction. The book assumes the reader knows the standard classifications it sets out to replace. It has no chapters on policy areas or country cases and is not a survey of comparative politics.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the comparative politics course, this is a theory-driven monograph that comes after the introductory textbooks. McCormick, Hague and Harrop's Comparative Government and Politics, Patrick O'Neil's Essentials of Comparative Politics, Caramani's edited Comparative Politics and Clark, Golder and Golder's Principles of Comparative Politics teach the field and its institutions, and the last of these also introduces simple game-theoretic models, which is helpful preparation for Tsebelis.

Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy is the natural companion: it classifies thirty-six democracies by majoritarian and consensus institutions along two dimensions, whereas Tsebelis classifies by veto players. Reading the two together shows two different ways of reducing institutional variety to a few analytical dimensions.

How to Use This Book

The book is for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in comparative politics, and for researchers working on legislatures, coalition governments or policy change. A comparative politics course and some comfort with spatial models and with reading regression results are the useful preparation.

A practical plan:

• Read the introduction and Chapters 1–2 closely. They contain the definitions on which everything else rests; read them again after the application chapters.
• Choose from Part II according to interest: Chapter 3 for regime types, Chapter 4 for governments and parliaments, Chapter 6 for federalism and second chambers.
• Read Parts III and IV for the tests. Chapters 7 to 10 show what the theory predicts for legislation, macroeconomic policy, government stability and the judiciary and bureaucracy.
• Treat Chapter 11 as optional unless the European Union is the subject, and use the conclusion to compare the theory's claims with a regime you know well.