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This article gives an initial overview of the explanatory power of established approaches in comparative political science of various lockdown strategies in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic in 35 democracies. In a macro-comparative statistical analysis of the first wave of the pandemic, I test partisan and veto player theories. I distinguish two phases of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which show distinct patterns of political impacts. In the first phase of implementing lockdown strategies, central governments were relatively uncontested and partisan theory has strong explanatory power. In the second phase of lifting lockdowns, party differences lose relevance, but veto players have a strong influence during this time. The analysis shows that political science theories are useful for analysing political processes not only under normal conditions but also in extreme social crises. Moreover, it provides deeper insights into the democratic decision-making process of advanced democracies in exceptional situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theory of the relationship between policy disasters and political institutions. Policy disasters, defined as avoidable, unintended extreme negative policy outcomes, are important political, and historical events above that receive relatively little attention from political scientists and scholars of public policy. Using the predictions of punctuated equilibrium theory, I argue that systems with higher error accumulation will experience more policy disasters. Systems with more veto players and weaker information flows will experience more policy disasters, but information flows will have a stronger impact than veto players. I test this theory using data on financial crises and natural and technological disasters across 70 countries over 60 years. I find strong evidence that systems with weaker information flows and more veto players tend to have greater policy disaster risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I offer a theory of lawmaking in multiparty presidential systems with different legislative institutions. I present a model that combines Krehbiel's pivotal politics theory with Tsebelis's veto players theory. This model simplifies various institutional veto players into the de facto veto players. I analyze the model to explain how the government type (unified versus divided governments), the legislative rules (majoritarian versus supermajoritarian rules), and the party system (two-party versus multiparty systems) affect legislative productivity. I apply the theoretical results obtained to solve the puzzle about the nondifferential legislative performance between unified and divided governments in the National Assembly. I test a hypothesis stating that the distance between the ideological positions of the agenda-setter and the de facto veto players has a negative effect on the proportion of controversial bills enacted between the 16th and the early 21st National Assemblies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent Portuguese parties fulfil their electoral pledges? And does this fulfilment imply short- or long-term reforms? More: to what extent do veto players constrain the fulfilment of government mandates? This article focuses on these questions, analysing seven legislatures, from 1995 to 2919 and a total of 6367 pledges. The results show that the rate of fulfilment is consistently high, that short-term pledges, albeit the majority, hold a fulfilment rate equal to those of long-term, and that veto players can significatively constrain the executive's capacity to carry out its mandate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the German divide, the two Germanys developed quite different elite sport systems. After reunification, the expensive and compromised East German state sport system was dismantled and the West German neo-corporatist policy approach to elite sport prevailed. The neo-corporatist approach is characterised by a large number of veto players which constantly bargain over influence and scarce resources. Globalisation and the diffusion of East German policy approaches have increased the competitive intensity in international sport and made the neo-corporatist approach increasingly anachronistic. Declining competitiveness has inspired several initiatives of the federal government to reform elite sport policymaking. So far, German elite sport seems to represent a policy domain where neo-corporatism resists the pressures of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline in youth participation in elections has been an ongoing concern in Australia, in spite of the requirement for compulsory turnout. In 2018, and in response to these concerns, the Australian parliament debated an electoral amendment that would lower the national voting age to 16 years. The Bill, however, did not succeed even though two opposition parties—the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Greens—supported the reform and the Morrison Government accepted the premise that youth electoral disengagement was a troubling phenomenon. Drawing on veto player theory, this article examines how the legislative dynamics intersected with partisan self‐interest and party value priorities to undercut the case for lowering the voting age to 16. The Australian case highlights the ways in which latent ideological differences among parties can serve to divide them on the inclusiveness of franchise, and the democratic goals to be served by voting. Related Articles: Cormack, Lindsey. 2019. "Leveraging Peer‐to‐Peer Connections to Increase Voter Participation in Local Elections." Politics & Policy 47 (2): 248‐266. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12297 Fisher, Patrick. 2020. "Generational Replacement and the Impending Transformation of the American Electorate." Politics & Policy 48 (1): 38‐68. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12340 Ike, Vivian. 2020. "The Impact of Veto Players on Incremental and Drastic Policy Making: Australia's Carbon tax Policy and its Repeal." Politics & Policy 48 (2): 232‐264. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12346 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a sample of 16 Western OECD countries we show that although veto players with heterogeneous political preferences reduce the probability of a structural fiscal consolidation, the effect of veto players declines with greater financial market pressure, which we measure as the spread between the long-term government bond yield and the corresponding yield in a base country (either the United States or Germany). We proxy veto players with heterogeneous political preferences primarily by the political constraints index of Henisz (Econ Polit 12(1):1–31, 2000). Our findings support the view that, as long as government bond yield spreads are sufficiently narrow, financial market pressure exerts a disciplining effect on fiscal policy by counteracting the political deadlock resulting from veto players who obstruct structural fiscal consolidations. The mirror image of our finding is that financial market pressure exerts a more positive impact on the likelihood of a structural fiscal consolidation in political environments characterized by many heterogeneous veto players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political institutions may directly affect the likelihood of currency crises by influencing market confidence. They may indirectly affect the likelihood of currency crises by influencing economic fundamentals. This study uses econometric mediation to estimate both direct and indirect causal pathways for veto player theory—a common framework for analyzing political institutional constraints—and finds this approach improves upon the standard econometric approach in the extant literature, which only estimates the direct causal pathway. This new mediated approach shows that political constraints also indirectly reduce the likelihood of crises through strengthening key economic fundamentals. Additionally, the analysis finds that when global conditions are stable, more constraints are shown to directly reduce the risk of crises. When global conditions are volatile, more constraints are shown to directly increase the risk of crises. Global volatility is more likely to cause crises in countries with relatively constrained political systems, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the effect of political factors on privatisation reforms and considers the practical implications of such policy from a comparative point of view in Europe. According to a sample of 25 countries in 1995–2013, our findings suggest that privatisation reforms could be impeded by veto players, fragmentised governments and political competition. These reforms tend to be used less by politicians who have been in power for a long period of time and implemented at the start of an office term, except in the case of right-wing governments. Our findings support greater privatisation in concentrated conservative governments, especially when the next elections are about to be held. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do international institutions promote economic cooperation among countries? The World Trade Organization (WTO) is central to the multilateral trade regime and a benchmark for international dispute resolution. Yet it remains unclear whether it has been effective in restoring trade cooperation. This article uses WTO disputes to examine the impact of domestic politics in the defendant country on compliance with adverse legal rulings. I build a novel data set on compliance. Using the method of synthetic case control, I estimate the effect of adverse rulings on trade flows between disputant countries using product-level time-series trade data. I infer the defendant complied if trade flows increased after the dispute, relative to estimated levels that would have occurred in the absence of the ruling. The results show domestic political divisions—measured by veto players—hinder compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this special issue is on the energy transformations taking place in several European countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland) and at the federal and subnational (state) levels in the United States with special attention given to California. The cases examined all have federalist structures, and with the exception of the federal level of the United States, all have relatively ambitious climate and renewable energy targets. We compare these states out of an interest in better understanding how federalism interacts with energy transitions. The comparison is also intriguing as at the federal level the United States presents a stark contrast with the federalist European countries considered in this special issue but at the subnational level many similarities can be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A leader from Quebec boosts the fortunes of the Liberal party in that province. This, in turn, has helped make Quebec the veto player in twentieth-century Canadian elections and the Liberals the "natural" governing party. Although Quebec is no longer as critical as before, a leader from the province still makes a big difference. Full impact from the pattern requires more than one election to unfold. Patterns outside Quebec are similar, if fainter: the Liberal party is not punished for choosing a Quebecker and may even be helped. The early success of the pattern moved the Liberals to alternate between Quebec and non-Quebec leaders, such that the party is now led by a Quebecker more often than not. Maintaining alternation has never been easy and is only getting harder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to identify the resilience of measures adopted during bailout programmes, and the conditions under which decisions-makers reverse them. Focusing on Spain and Portugal (2014–2019), we calculated that almost half (46 per cent) of the most important measures adopted during the programmes were reversed in the five years following the bailouts. We also show that left-wing parties reversed more than right wing and that the bulk of structural reforms remained unchanged. Using crisp-set qualitative-comparative analysis (QCA), we find that business interests, veto players' preferences and governments' electoral calculations are determinants of reversals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shocks to global interest rates or risk cause capital outflows for countries outside the core of the global financial system. These outflows lead to downward pressure on exchange rates and financial sector stress, in addition to having general contractionary effects. To defend the exchange rate, the appropriate internal response is a fiscal/monetary contraction. To maintain full employment and financial stability, the appropriate internal response is fiscal/monetary expansion. The contradiction in these policy responses implies policymakers prioritize hitting either internal or external targets after these shocks; but how do they decide? Using a fixed effects model and data from 100 emerging market and developing economies from 1990 to 2012, we show that the relative sensitivity of interest groups to these policy responses influences which response occurs. We find some evidence that this effect is stronger in the presence of more political-institutional constraints. Using a strategic probit model, we also find some evidence that this policy response influences the relative likelihood of banking crises versus currency crashes after these global shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions are Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programs successfully implemented following intrastate conflict? Previous research is dominated by under-theorized case studies that lack the ability to detect the precise factors and mechanisms that lead to successful DDR. In this article, we draw on game theory and ask how the number of veto players, their policy distance, and their internal cohesion impact DDR implementation. Using empirical evidence from Nepal and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we show that the number of veto players, rather than their distance and cohesion, explains the (lack of) implementation of DDR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do major events of gun violence (i.e., mass shootings) lead to incremental change or no federal legislative change at all in the United States while major events of gun violence have resulted in large-scale legislative changes in Canada? Exploring the complexities involved in this compelling question, this article conducts a comparative analysis of recent gun control policy gridlock and shift in these two countries. We concentrate on two mass shooting cases in each country: the Columbine (1990) and Sandy Hook (2012) massacres in the United States and the École Polytechnique Massacre (1989) and Concordia Shooting (1992) in Canada. We use veto player theory to gain insights into why tightening gun policy is so difficult to implement in the United States while Canada often follows up with policy transformations after a focusing event. This theory informs the central argument that the key factors underpinning the divergent policy outcomes on gun control issues in both countries involve differences in the structure of government/institutional design and the role and power of interest groups in each case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study three-valued simple games as a natural extension of simple games. We analyze to which extent well-known results on the core and the Shapley value for simple games can be extended to this new setting. To describe the core of a three-valued simple game we introduce (primary and secondary) vital players, in analogy to veto players for simple games. Moreover, it is seen that the transfer property of Dubey (1975) can still be used to characterize the Shapley value for three-valued simple games. We illustrate three-valued simple games and the corresponding Shapley value in a parliamentary bicameral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In international relations, different rationalistic theories have developed to explain negotiators’ behavior and the outcomes of negotiations. The compatibility and interaction effects between the different forms of bargaining power, however, remain unexplored. In this article, I seek to fill this gap by connecting four rationalistic concepts of bargaining power: veto power, asymmetric interdependence, reputation, and audience costs. By showing that domestic veto players are only semiveto players in international politics – because they can veto an improvement but not a deterioration of the status quo – threats based on asymmetric interdependence to disrupt a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship can be connected to veto power; the incompatibility of the factors concerned would otherwise make this impossible. The combination of veto power and asymmetric interdependence, however, raises a theoretical question: Will rational actors ever approve a deterioration of the status quo? Theories of reputation and audience costs can help answer this question. According to these approaches, threatening parties suffer ex post costs when they back down from their own threats. This theoretical analysis sheds new light on how different forms of bargaining power interact with each other and also helps to address some of the theoretical inconsistencies of the original individual concepts. Finally, this analysis suggests some of the weaknesses of empirical studies that have neglected these interaction effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins with the simple questions of why and how South-North Korean rivalry or inter-Korean rivalry has persisted for decades. To answer these questions, I develop a theory of multilevel veto players and test the hypotheses drawn from the theory for the case of the hostile relations between South and North Korea from 1954 to 2007. Central to the theory is that maintenance of the rivalry is the result of rival leaders' efforts to maximize either the national interests of their country or their own personal interest—staying in power—subject both to the external constraint of great power intervention and to the internal constraint of challenges by hardline veto groups. By applying this theory to the case of the inter-Korean rivalry from 1954-2007, the paper finds that the leaders of South and North Korea have maintained their hostile relations over the past five decades because they believe that maintaining the relations will help them either maximize their nation's security interest or increase their chances of remaining in power, subject to the constraints. Specifically, the constraints have prevented the rival leaders from resolving the issues in dispute on the battlefield or at a negotiation table, making the inter-Korean rivalry persist across time. The findings offer a contribution to an enhanced understanding of the maintenance process in international rivalries, most notably the inter-Korean rivalry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Veto player theory generates predictions about governments’ capacity for policy change. Due to the difficulty of identifying significant laws needed to change the policy status quo, evidence about governments’ ability to change policy has been mostly provided for a limited number of reforms and single‐country studies. To evaluate the predictive power of veto player theory for policy making across time, policy areas and countries, a dataset was gathered that incorporates about 5,600 important government reform measures in the areas of social, labour, economic and taxation policy undertaken in 13 Western European countries from the mid‐1980s until the mid‐2000s. Veto player theory is applied in a combined model with other central theoretical expectations on policy change derived from political economy (crisis‐driven policy change) and partisan theory (ideology‐driven policy change). Robust support is found that governments introduce more reform measures when economic conditions are poor and when the government is positioned further away from the policy status quo. No empirical support is found for predictions of veto player theory in its pure form, where no differentiation between government types is made. However, the findings provide support for the veto player theory in the special case of minimal winning cabinets, where the support of all government parties is sufficient (in contrast to minority cabinets) and necessary (in contrast to oversized cabinets) for policy change. In particular, it is found that in minimal winning cabinets the ideological distance between the extreme government parties significantly decreases the government's ability to introduce reforms. These findings improve our understanding of reform making in parliamentary democracies and highlight important issues and open questions for future applications and tests of the veto player theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a veto game a biased expert recommends an action that an uninformed decision maker can accept or reject for an outside option. The arrangement is ubiquitous in political institutions, corporations, and consumer markets but has seen limited use in applications due to a poor understanding of the equilibrium set and an ensuing debate over selection. We develop a simple method to construct every veto equilibrium and identify the most informative equilibrium in a setting that spans prior work. We show that Krishna and Morgan's (2001) equilibrium is maximally informative and strengthen Dessein's (2002) comparison of full delegation and veto. In an application we study the relationship between a patient and a doctor with a financial incentive to overtreat, and show that the doctor's bias harms the patient both through excessive treatment and information loss, that the latter can be substantial, and that insurance benefits both parties by improving communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Federal Reforms I and II heralded a comprehensive modernization of the state. Together they impact the work of the Bundesrat (Federal Council), the upper house of the German Parliament. In this context, it can be assumed that compatible majorities between the Bundestag (Federal Parliament), the lower house of the German Parliament, and the Federal Council expedite the legislative process and opposing majorities block the process. But, to what extent does the Federal Council, in fact, assume the role of a destructive veto player? This study deepens and extends the insights into this research question with a differentiated, holistic and exclusive analysis of the data material. To describe the institution as a destructive veto player in opposing majorities does not correspond with the empirical analysis. The Federal Council may from time to time behave like a destructive veto player, because the ability to influence the process is derived from the constitutionally entrenched potential to prevent a law. Primarily, however, the Federal Council operates on the level of compromises in the cooperative federal state, in which the process is embedded in a comprehensive, often time-consuming, negotiation mechanism between the Federal Government and the states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the mechanisms establishing time consistency of constitutions. It explains why shorter and more locked constitutions are more likely to be time consistent (change less) and that long constitutions are more time inconsistent (change more, despite locking). Empirical evidence from all of the democratic countries in the world indicates that the length and locking of constitutions are not independent criteria, and that their combination leads to less time consistency. To address this inter-relationship, a measure of time inconsistency (a combination of locking and amendment rate) is developed and it is demonstrated that it is connected with the length of constitutions. The article shows how time inconsistency is incompatible with theories of 'constitutional amendment culture' not only at the theoretical level, but also empirically. Finally, the article proves that the empirical finding that the length of constitutions is related to lower per capita income and higher corruption are not only in agreement with time inconsistency arguments, but this also extends beyond OECD countries to all democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a novel technique of Kurz and Napel (2015), we demonstrate that the worst-case growth of dimension in complete simple games is exponential in the number of players. We also prove that roughly-weighted games of arbitrary dimension exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is devoted to the investigation of intuitively rational choice in a hierarchical game that is a model of election by open sequential veto-voting. Casting a veto against voter’s least preferred alternative (among remaining ones) may not lead to a sophisticated equilibrium. It means that sincere choice (being intuitive) is not rational. There arises the problem of finding conditions under which a sophisticated optimal sequence of actions is intuitively rational. We prove that in the case of strict preference ordering of alternatives, there exists an intuitively rational sophisticated optimal sequence. In the sequence, each voter vetoes an alternative less preferred than the sophisticated equilibrium outcome. Thus, only intuitively rational strategies are to be considered, although complete information about voters’ preferences is still needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study dynamic policymaking when today's policy agreement becomes tomorrow's status quo, agents account for the consequences of today's policies for future policy outcomes, and there is uncertainty about who will hold future political power to propose and veto future policy changes. Today's agenda setter holds back from fully exploiting present opportunities to move policy toward her ideal point whenever future proposer and veto players are likely to be aligned either in favor of reform or against it. Otherwise, agenda setters advance their short-run interests. Optimal proposals can vary discontinuously and nonmonotonically with political fundamentals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is critical to global peace and security, yet more than 20 years of negotiations over its reform have proved fruitless. We use recent advances in the theory of a priori voting power to present a formal quantitative appraisal of the implications for democratic equity and efficiency of the 'structural reforms' contained within 11 current reform proposals, as well as the separate effect of expansion of the UNSC membership. Only one reform proposal-a weakening of the veto power for Permanent Members by requiring two negative votes for a veto to be effective-robustly dominates the status quo against our measures of equity and efficiency. Several proposed structural reforms may actually worsen the issues they ostensibly claim to resolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2012, same-sex marriage has been legal in Brazil. This, however, was accomplished without the participation of any political branch: the only lawmaking actor involved was the Supreme Court. In existing studies on the judicialization of politics, lawmakers are typically the first movers, while courts function as actual or potential veto players regarding the outcome of the legislative process. The Brazilian Supreme Court, however, when provoked by social and political actors under specific circumstances, has delivered decisions that: (a) established rules in areas of law where the elected branches had not made any decisions in the last decades; and (b) at least in how they came to be treated by the Supreme Court itself, foreclosed further congressional or presidential lawmaking on these topics. This paper is a case study on the conditions in which this judicial role - of a first and only legislative chamber - has emerged in Brazil. Although Brazilian constitutional law includes a couple of mechanisms designed for judicial review of legislative omissions, it was the Supreme Court's increasingly expansive reading of its own powers - not those deliberately designed to allow for judicial legislation - that created opportunities for social and political movements to bypass Congress and change the constitutional status quo according to their ideals. This new role of the Supreme Court, however, creates tension between two different justifications for judicial intervention in politics - when judges act last, they are constrained by not having also been the first to decide what the constitution requires and allows for on a given issue. In same-sex marriage litigation and in several other recent cases, however, the Brazilian Supreme Court has been trying to have it both ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of constitutional courts and supreme courts with constitutional review rights has strongly increased with the third wave of democratisation across the world as an important element of the new constitutionalism. These courts play an important role in day-to-day politics as they can nullify acts of parliament and thus prevent or reverse a change in the status quo. In macro-concepts of comparative politics, their role is unclear. Either they are integrated as counter-majoritarian institutional features of a political system or they are entirely ignored: some authors do not discuss their potential impact at all, while others dismiss them because they believe their preferences as veto players are entirely absorbed by other actors in the political system. However, we know little about the conditions and variables that determine them as being counter-majoritarian or veto players. This article employs the concept of Tsebelis' veto player theory to analyse the question. It focuses on the spatial configuration of veto players in the legislative process and then adds the court as an additional player to find out if it is absorbed in the pareto-efficient set of the existing players or not. A court which is absorbed by other veto players should not in theory veto new legislation. It is argued in this article that courts are conditional veto players. Their veto is dependent on three variables: the ideological composition of the court; the pattern of government control; and the legislative procedures. To empirically support the analysis, data from the United States, France and Germany from 1974 to 2009 is used. This case selection increases variance with regard to system types and court types. The main finding is that courts are not always absorbed as veto players: during the period of analysis, absorption varies between 11 and 71 per cent in the three systems. Furthermore, the pattern of absorption is specific in each country due to government control, court majority and legislative procedure. Therefore, it can be concluded that they are conditional veto players. The findings have at least two implications. First, constitutional courts and supreme courts with judicial review rights should be systematically included in veto player analysis of political systems and not left aside. Any concept ignoring such courts may lead to invalid results, and any concept that counts such courts merely as an institutional feature may lead to distorted results that over- or under-estimate their impact. Second, the findings also have implications for the study of judicial politics. The main bulk of literature in this area is concerned with auto-limitation, the so-called 'self-restraint' of the government to avoid defeat at the court. This auto-limitation, however, should only occur if a court is not absorbed. However, vetoes observed when the court is absorbed might be explained by strategic behaviour among judges engaging in selective defection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of domestic veto players has become a popular explanation for foreign policy rigidity. We argue that veto players can be amenable to new policy initiatives – in our case preferential trade agreements (PTAs) – but then choose to exert a strong influence on their contents. Drawing upon more than a dozen PTA-design variables for an expanded collection of postwar trade agreements, our quantitative tests reveal that veto players systematically shape what is included in, and excluded from, PTAs. Most notably, agreements concluded under greater veto-player constraints contain fewer liberalization commitments, weaker dispute settlement, and more opt-outs in the form of trade remedies. Our findings highlight domestic political actors as important determinants of international institutional design and show that veto players exert additional, and perhaps stronger, influence on what is proscribed in agreements, not just whether they are enacted in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note examines the structure of stationary bargaining equilibria in the finite framework of Anesi (2010) . The main result establishes a tight connection between the set of equilibrium absorbing points and the von Neumann–Morgenstern solutions: assuming that players are patient, that the voting rule is oligarchical, and that there is at least one veto player with positive recognition probability, a set of alternatives corresponds to the absorbing points of an equilibrium if and only if it is a von Neumann–Morgenstern solution. We also apply our analysis of ergodic properties of equilibria to the persistent agenda setter environment of Diermeier and Fong (2012) . We show that all equilibria are essentially pure, and we extend their characterization of absorbing sets to allow an arbitrary voting rule and by removing the restriction to pure strategy equilibria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are potential cabinets more likely to form when they control institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority vetoes? Existing evidence for a causal effect of veto control has been weak. This article presents evidence for this effect on the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies between 1955 and 2012. It also shows that the size of the effect varies systematically across political-institutional contexts. The estimated causal effect was greater in countries that eventually abolished the relevant veto institutions. It is suggested that the incidence of constitutional reform is a proxy for context-specific factors that increased the incentives for veto control and simultaneously provided a stimulus for the weakening of institutional veto power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Veto player theory is a powerful approach to comparative politics. This article argues that the debate about its explanatory success would benefit from more systematic distinctions. The theory not only comes in different theoretical variants, it is also used in radically different ways empirically. Starting from recent debates about the 'testing' of theoretical models, the article distinguishes five ways in which theoretical models can be used empirically: contrastive, axiomatic, exploratory, presumptive and modular. The typology is applied to veto player theory and illustrated with exemplary studies and debates. The article concludes that each type raises different questions that should be answered in individual studies. Moreover, while veto player theory has an excellent track record on four empirical uses, the picture on its contrastive use is far more nuanced. More explicitly contrastive testing of the theory is desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the balance that democratizing constitutions strike between majority empowerment and individual rights? Some constitutions deliberately handicap state power to forestall threats to liberty, while others try to empower the government to hold the country together. We answer this question in the context of post-Arab Spring constitution-making, hypothesizing a U-shaped relationship between polarization among politically significant factions and net majority-empowering provisions in constitutions of new democracies, a relationship mediated by breadth of inclusion in the constitutional drafting process. We test the hypothesis through a controlled case comparison of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, the three Arab-majority countries in which protestors successfully toppled authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What is driving Russian climate policy? This article focuses on the veto player approach developed by George Tsebelis and its applicability for examining the power relations in climate change policy-making in Russia. It makes two original contributions: veto players analysis on Russian climate policy and proposals how to adjust to theory to be applied to non-democracies for comparison with democracies. After identifying the veto players and their preferences, and determining their equivalence in the decision-making process, two case studies are examined: the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the establishment of one of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, Joint Implementation, in Russia. Regarding the power play between actors, the latter emerges as far more accessible than the former, where scholars can generally observe only the domestic debate-which, due to the absorption of democratic decision-making institutions by the president, is detached from the actual decision-making process. Three proposals are made for adjusting the veto players approach to facilitate qualitative analysis of Russian decision-making: (1) select cases which involve also lower-level actors in charge of policy implementation; (2) due to implementation problems, changes in the status quo must be sought deeper than in statute-level changes; and (3) note that motivations of actors beyond the actual policy substance can facilitate explanations of puzzling outcomes in the process . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Founding Fathers conceived formal counter-majoritarian restrictions aimed specifically to “render the majority unable”: to prevent the majority from trampling on minorities in the U.S. democratic system. This article contends that several such formal restrictions actually fail to protect contemporary minorities as the founders imagined they would. Indeed, counter-majority restrictions embedded in the Electoral College, the Senate, and the judicial review may actually prohibit such protection. Using a comparative politics approach, this article builds on theoretical arguments and data that evaluate democratic functionality and fairness based on level of social equality provisions as well as optimality of voter participation. I find that certain counter-majoritarian procedures are empirically linked to higher inequality levels across twenty-one advanced democracies. This political suboptimality is reflected in a significant correlation between higher Gini coefficients and majoritarian systems (with the United States in first place) in the sample and also between lower scores and consensus democracies. I argue that comparative analysis shows that some criticisms hitherto only leveled at the United States are present in an entire family of systems—the majoritarian ones—which begs significant critical questioning of the impact of institutional design on the effectiveness of social policies and inclusive democratic procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study of how institutional constraints affect legislative activism and how legislative activism in turn affects policy change through an analysis of the European Union's legislative process. The argument revolves around the key role of the European Commission in advancing policy change, and emphasises that the Commission can successfully push for increased policy change by increasing its legislative activity when the institutional opportunity space widens. Using a novel panel dataset covering eight policy sectors from the period 1984-2012, the article shows that the number of legislative proposals significantly affects the extent of regulatory reform in the EU. The rise in the number of legislative proposals, in turn, is affected by the extent of gridlock between the EU's legislative bodies. These findings show that the Commission steps up its legislative activity when the institutional opportunity space allows for greater policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of veto player was originally introduced in simple games (see Nakamura in Int J Game Theory 8:55-61, 1979), for which every coalition has a value of 0 or 1. In this paper we extend it to monotonic cooperative games with transferable utility: a player has veto power if all coalitions not containing her are worthless. We examine and characterize the core (and other solution concepts) for these 'veto games'. In particular, for this class of games, we show the equivalence between the core and the bargaining set. Our work generalizes the clan games and big-boss games introduced respectively by Potters et al. (Games Econ Behav 1:275-293, 1989) and Muto et al. (Econ Stud Q 39:303-321, 1988). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have become important and controversial in global economy. We analyze why some SWFs have more encompassing and clearly specified governance rules than others. We argue that SWF institutionalization is structurally rooted in a country’s regime type and number of veto players in public policymaking. Democracy promotes SWF institutionalization by its need for strong rule of law, voters trying to constrain opportunistic behaviors of politicians, and the free flow of information. In contrast, the number of veto players has a curvilinear effect. When the number of veto players is very small, institutionalization is too rigid, constraining, and not preferred; when the number of veto players is moderate, it is optimal for veto players to manage their conflict over SWF governance in a more routine and institutionalized fashion; and when the number of veto players grows above a threshold, it becomes too costly to coordinate and produce mutually agreeable institutional rules. Our empirical analysis of 46 SWFs in 30 countries from 2007 to 2009 provides robust confirming evidence. SWF governance is more institutionalized and transparent in democracies and in countries with four veto players. Our research has important theoretical and policy implications for the ongoing debate over SWF. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In political economy, the seminal contribution of the Baron-Ferejohn bargaining model constitutes an important milestone for the study of legislative policy making. In this paper, we analyze a particular equilibrium characteristic of this model, equilibrium uniqueness. The Baron-Ferejohn model yields a class of payoff-unique stationary subgame perfect equilibria (SSPE) in which players' equilibrium strategies are not uniquely determined. We first provide a formal proof of the multiplicity of equilibrium strategies. This also enables us to establish some important properties of SSPE. We then introduce veto players into the original Baron-Ferejohn model. We state the conditions under which the new model has a unique SSPE not only in terms of payoffs but also in terms of players' equilibrium strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia has been prolific in creating local governments since 1999. This article reexamines provincial division in Indonesia and proposes a Veto players (VP) Theory of territorial reform, a function of the interplay of a number of VPs, their cohesion, and congruence of VP preferences. Using comparative analysis and process tracing of successful and failed cases through key informant interviews and secondary materials, Indonesia is found to have large but decisive VPs, where the direction of reform is contingent on the preferences of local players through territorial leveraging or opportunism. They are political elites who are supported by social movements whose preferences run parallel with the former. Despite a large absolute number of VPs, territorial reform was achieved due to smaller effective number of VPs (via established executive-legislative relations), due to mirroring and manipulation of preferences through side payments and other strategic behaviors (lobbying and social mobilization), and through reciprocity norms of patronage and personal linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many European integration treaties - most notably the failed Constitutional Treaty - have faced ratification by referendum in various member states. Although the literature on voting behaviour in these referendums in now well established, the reasons why these referendums were held in the first place is under-scrutinised. This article examines the reasons EU member states decide to call referendums in order to ratify EU treaties and argues that they do so primarily as a result of domestic political pressure arising from three sources: electoral pressure when the EU is unpopular and elections are close, rules governing the use of referendums, and domestic institutional veto players. This theory is tested using a combination of single and multi-level logistic regression analysis, which finds support for the hypotheses developed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two features of the Greek crisis that need explanation: the lopsided outcome where Greece did not achieve any of its stated goals; and the protracted negotiations. I explain these two features as results of two factors:Nested Games(the Greek prime minister was also involved in a game inside his own party); and incomplete information (the Greek government did not understand the weight of unanimity to change thestatus quoin the EU, and did the best it could to create a unanimity, of all the other countries, against it). The lessons from the crisis are two-sided: for the Greek side not to lose any more time in the application of the agreements (say, with elections); for the EU side to consider different ways of forming and aggregating preferences: having elections (with a wide EU constituency as opposed to national ones), and making decisions (eliminating the unanimity requirement). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do national legislatures constitute a mechanism by which commitments to international human rights treaties can be made credible? Treaty ratification can activate domestic mechanisms that make repression more costly, and the legislative opposition can enhance these mechanisms. Legislative veto players raise the cost of formalistic repressive strategies by declining to consent to legislation. Executives can still choose to rely on more costly, extralegal strategies, but these could result in severe penalties for the leader and require the leader to expend resources to hide. Especially in treaty member-states, legislatures can use other powers to also increase the cost of extralegal violations, which can further reduce repression. By using an empirical strategy that attempts to address the selection effects in treaty commitment decisions, I show that positive effects of human rights treaties increase when there are more legislative veto players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chief executives in many parliamentary democracies have the power to dissolve the legislature. Despite a well-developed literature on the endogenous timing of parliamentary elections, political scientists know remarkably little about the strategic use of dissolution power to influence policymaking. To address this gap, we propose and empirically evaluate a theoretical model of legislative bargaining in the shadow of executive dissolution power. The model implies that the chief executive's public support and legislative strength, as well as the time until the next constitutionally mandated election, are important determinants of the use and effectiveness of dissolution threats in policymaking. Analyzing an original time-series data set from a multiparty parliamentary democracy, we find evidence in line with key empirical implications of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representation is inherent to democracy and truly representative institutions are vital for a good quality democracy. However, the argument that parliaments are not sufficiently representative because of female under-representation is widespread. A number of countries around the world have introduced gender quotas in order to enhance the descriptive representation of women. This article analyses women's representation and the adoption of gender quotas in Poland. After several unsuccessful attempts, the law was finally approved in 2011. Veto players analysis is used to explain this policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper studies an allocation procedure for coalitional games with veto players. The procedure is similar to the one presented by Arin and Feltkamp (J Math Econ 43:855-870, ), which is based on Dagan et al. (Games Econ Behav 18:55-72, ). A distinguished player makes a proposal that the remaining players must accept or reject, and conflict is solved bilaterally between the rejector and the proposer. We allow the proposer to make sequential proposals over several periods. If responders are myopic maximizers (i.e. consider each period in isolation), the only equilibrium outcome is the serial rule of Arin and Feltkamp (Eur J Oper Res 216:208-213, ) regardless of the order of moves. If all players are fully rational, the serial rule still arises as the unique subgame perfect equilibrium outcome if the order of moves is such that stronger players respond to the proposal after weaker ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]