Tsebelis G. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

101

PART II: VETO PLAYERS AND INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS

In the previous part we identified differences of abstract veto player systems. We saw

what happens if we add veto players, if new veto players are near or far from the existing ones, if

the unanimity core of a system of veto players includes the unanimity core of another one. We

also saw what difference it makes if we take collective decision-making seriously and examine

all different collective decisionmaking rules: majority, qualified majorities as well as unanimity.

In this part I will apply the framework to specific institutional structures of interest to

comparative political analysis: democratic and non-democratic regimes, presidentialism and

parliamentarism, unicameralism and bicameralism, two and multiparty systems, strong and weak

parties.

I have two distinct goals for this part. The first is to develop specific rules for the

empirical analyses that follow: which institutions or parties count as veto players under what

conditions, how we include the interactions of governments and parliaments in the analysis, the

effect of referendums or of qualified majority decisions for a political system. The second is to

reexamine on the basis of this analysis prevailing ideas in comparative politics.

The findings in this part will be both positive and negative. Some parts of conventional

wisdom are confirmed; others are spurious, while other aspects are questioned. For example, the

distinction of regimes in presidential and parliamentary can be overcome and within each of the

categories the variance between specific systems is large. So, actual political systems, instead of

belonging to two distinct distributions, form a continuum where similarities can be greater across

than within systems. As a result, veto players theory challenges some traditional distinctions like

presidentialsim vs. parliamentarism used in comparative politics.

102

In addition, we will focus on different features of some of the conventional classifications

and study additional properties of political systems. For example, instead of focusing on the

party system of countries with parliamentary systems, the veto players theory focuses on the

structure of government coalitions as well as some institutional characteristics (existence of

presidents or a second chamber able to veto legislation) with significantly different results.

This part is organized along the lines of traditional institutional analysis. Chapter 3 deals

with regimes: democratic and non-democratic, presidential and parliamentary. Chapter 4 deals

with the relationship between governments and parliaments. Chapter 5 deals with direct

legislation of citizens through referendums. Chapter 6 deals with federalism, bicameralism, and

qualified majorities. The titles (with the possible exception of qualified majorities) are standard

in any comparative politics book. I added qualified majorities as a subject to focus on because as

I argue they are much more frequent (de facto) that one is led to believe by looking superficially

at the letter of institutional arrangements.

While the titles are familiar, the logic of the analysis will usually contrast with traditional

analyses while borrowing the concepts that are congruent with veto players. The main angles of

analysis will be the properties of different constellations of veto players, and the identity of the

agenda setter in each decisionmaking process. The first two chapters will be making the

argument that one can understand most of the differences among regimes, or in the interaction

between governments and parliaments, by focusing on the issue of agenda setting. Chapter 3

argues that despite the expectations generated about the location of political power by the

adjectives “presidential” and “parliamentary” associated with different regimes, agenda control

belongs usually to the opoosite player (the government in parliamentary systems and the

parliament in presidential ones). Chapter 4 on the relations between government and parliament

103

analyses the institutions of agenda control and argues that it is these institutions that regulate the

interaction and not government duration as is argued in the literature (Lijphart 1999). Chapter 5

on referendums argues that all referendums add one more veto player (the population) and their

differences are based on the question of who controls each part of the agenda. Chapter 6 will

view the subject matters of federalism, bicameralism, and qualified majorities through the angle

of the number of veto players. The chapter makes the argument that federalism has usually

distinct institutions regulating decisionmaking at the national level, and that bicameralism and

qualified majorities increase the number of veto players but in ways that produce different policy

outcomes.

104

CHAPTER 3: REGIMES: NON-DEMOCRATIC, PRESIDENTIAL, AND

PARLIAMENTARY

In this chapter I introduce the reader to the debates in the traditional literature. Then, I

explain the difference between regimes as a difference in essential features of the agenda setting

process: democratic and non-democratic regimes differ in whether the agenda setting process is

competitive or not (a difference in the process of agenda setting); presidential and parliamentary

regimes differ in the identity of the agenda setter (government in parliamentary systems,

parliament in presidential ones; exactly the opposite from the expectations generated by the

names). In addition, presidentialism vs. parliamentarism is based on what is the permissible

endogenous change (changes in government vs., changes in legislative coalitions). As a result of

this difference, parties in parliamentary systems are more homogenous or at least more

disciplined than in presidential systems. My overall argument is that most of the differences

between regimes discussed in the traditional literature can be studied as differences in the

number, ideological distances and cohesion of the corresponding veto players as well as the

identity, preferences, and institutional powers of agenda setters. As a result of the arguments

developed in this chapter it will become clear that while the expectation of the distribution of

political power generated by the adjectives “presidential” and “parliamentary” associated with

different regimes is mistaken, and that in terms of lawmaking agenda control most frequently

belongs to governments in parliamentary systems and parliaments in presidential ones.

The chapter is organized in three parts. First, I discuss the main arguments in the

literature on democratic vs. non-democratic and presidential vs. parliamentary regimes. Then, I

provide the veto player theory perspective on the issues raised by the traditional literature.

Finally, I discuss some of the criticisms of veto players theory with regards to this analysis.

105

1. Authoritarian, Presidential and Parliamentary Regimes in the Literature

It may be argued that an analysis that uses the number and properties of veto players as

its independent variables is ignoring the most fundamental distinctions in the literature: the one

between democratic and non-democratic regimes, or between presidential and parliamentary

regimes. Indeed, both a democratic and an authoritarian regime may have a single veto player, or

a presidential and a parliamentary regime may have several veto players. Are there any

differences? In order to answer this question I will first summarize some of the literature on

democratic vs. authoritarian regimes, and some on presidentialism vs. parliamentarism. Each one

of these subjects has such an extensive bibliography that it would be presumptuous to claim that

I know it all, and impossible to cover it in a segment of a chapter.

a. Democratic vs. Authoritarian Regimes

For many theorists democracy converges, or should converge, to the common good as

expressed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Social Contract. Rousseau believes we start with

individual desires, sum them up and “the sum of the difference is the general will.” This very

simple formulation of the general will has been criticized by Kenneth Arrow in his

“impossibility” theorem (Arrow 1951) and an extensive literature that followed.

Joseph Schumpeter also criticized Rousseau, and replaced his concept of democracy by

elite competition for government. According to Schumpeter’s definition: “The democratic

method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals

acquire the power to decide by means of competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (Schumpeter

1950: 269).

According to subsequent models of democracy (Downs (1957)) elite competition leads to

See Riker (1982) for a review of this literature, and the conclusion that Rousseau’s notion of general will cannot

survive the criticism generated by this literature.

106

moderation at least when there are two political parties so that each one of them tries to attract

the “median voter.” Giovanni Sartori (1967) looking at existing party systems extended the

Downsian argument to the ones with less than five parties, and claimed that such systems

represent “moderate” pluralism, while systems with more than six parties are likely to include

“extremist” parties with centrifugal tendencies. In addition, elite competition leads to

responsiveness of governments from fear of losing the next election.

Schumpeter’s definition had a profound impact in political theory and the social sciences

in general. It is considered a minimal definition of democracy and a necessary condition for it. In

fact, subsequent analyses have, in general, enlarged the requirements. The first and probably

most prominent extension of requirements of democracy (because of its use by international

institutions in assessing which countries are democratic) is Robert Dahl’s creation.

Dahl (1971: 2) reserves the term of democracy “for a political system one of the

characteristics of which is the quality of being almost completely responsive to all its citizens.”

He poses five requirements for democracy. They include equality in voting, effective

participation, enlightened understanding, final control over the agenda, and inclusion (Dahl

(1982: 6)). Given that these requirements are difficult to achieve under any circumstances, he

creates a new term “polyarchy” (Dahl (1971:8)) and proposes a series of seven restrictions

necessary for it (Dahl 1982: 10-11). These restrictions include rules about citizens’ freedom of

information, speech, and association, the right to vote and be a candidate, freedom of election,

and policy decisions made by elected officials.

107

Other authors have criticized Dahl for being too formal. Some of these critics introduced

additional criteria on inequalities (particularly of wealth and income). These conceptions expand

democracy from the political to the social and economic spheres.

On the other hand, Adam Przeworski (1999) has provided a minimalist defense of

Schumpeterian democracy. Along with the literature stemming from Arrow, he accepts that

democracy is not “rational, in the eighteenth-century sense of the term” (Przeworski 1999: 25).

In other words, there is nothing that can be defined as the common good to be maximized

(existence). If there were, the democratic process does not necessarily identify it (convergence),

and if it did, democracy is not the only system that does (uniqueness). “It thus seems that

choosing rulers by elections does not assure either rationality, or representation, or equality”

(Przeworski (1999: 43)). But according to this analysis there is something else that makes the

Schumpeterian notion of democracy desirable, and here is where Przeworski’s analysis departs

from all other approaches that add requirements to Schumpeter’s definition.

Przeworski takes away the elite competition part and replaces it by a lottery. This way he

aborts any connection between elections and representation. “Note that when the authorization to

rule is determined by a lottery, citizens have no electoral sanction, prospective or retrospective,

and the incumbents have no electoral incentives to behave well while in office. Since electing

governments by a lottery makes their chances of survival independent of their conduct, there are

no reasons to expect that governments act in a representative fashion because they want to earn

re-election.” (Przeworski (1999: 45).

Przeworski goes on to demonstrate that even this sub-standard system under certain

conditions presents one significant advantage: that the losers in an election may prefer to wait

See C.B. Macpherson (1973) and T.H. Marshall (1965) and more recently D. Rueschmeyer, E. Huber Stephens

and J. Stephens (1992).

108

until the next round rather than to revolt against the system. This peaceful preservation property

a fortiori holds for Schumpeterian democracy where citizens control electoral sanctions and

representatives know that re-election depends on responsiveness.

This is a very short and partial account of literature on democracy. I have completely

ignored deliberative issues, that is, questions of transforming the preferences of citizens.

account demonstrates that most of the literature revolves around the Schumpeterian idea of elite

competition for government that generates responsiveness of government to the people. On the

other hand, non-democratic regimes lack the transparency of leadership selection, and may lack

representation, but (surprisingly?) on the average do not produce inferior economic performance

from democratic regimes (Przeworski and Limongi (1997), Przeworski et al (2000)).

b. Presidentialism vs. Parliamentarism

The definitional distinction between presidential and parliamentary regimes is the

political independence or interdependence of the legislative and the executive branches.

According to Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach (1993: 3-4): “A pure parliamentary regime in a

democracy is a system of mutual dependence: 1. The chief executive power must be supported

by a majority in the legislature and can fall if it receives a vote of no confidence. 2. The

executive power (normally in conjunction with the head of state) has the capacity to dissolve the

legislature and call for elections. A pure presidential regime in a democracy is a system of

mutual independence: 1. The legislative power has a fixed electoral mandate that is its own

source of legitimacy. 2. The chief executive power has a fixed electoral mandate that is its own

source of legitimacy.”

For a more detailed analysis of democracy see Przeworki (1991).

For an up to date discussion of such problems see Shapiro (2001).

109

Stepan and Skach consider these definitions as providing “the necessary and sufficient

characteristics” and being “more than classificatory.” What is important here is that they

articulate the consensus in the literature. Starting from Bageot (1867 in Norton (1990)) and going

through Linz (1996), Lijphart (1992, 1999), Shugart and Carey (1992), the political dependence

between legislative and executive is the defining characteristic of parliamentarism. Elgie (1998)

has criticized the distinction as being ambiguous and leading to different classifications of the

same country, and Strom (2000) has tried to address the problems by providing a minimum

definition of parliamentarism relying only on the possibility of the parliament to remove the

government from office.

Most of the literature has focused on the implications of this distinction for different

regimes. Are presidential systems better or worse than parliamentary ones? In particular is

presidentialism a stable basis for democracies? The most famous debate originated in an article

written by Juan Linz (1996) who criticized the ability of presidentialism to sustain democratic

regimes. Linz summarized his position as follows: “Perhaps the best way to summarize the basic

differences between presidential and parliamentary systems is to say that while parliamentarism

imparts flexibility to the political process, Presidentialism makes it rather rigid” (Linz 1996:128).

The reason for the flexibility of parliamentarism and the rigidity of presidentialism is the

endogeneity of government formation in a parliamentary system. Once elections are held either

there is a majority party that forms the government, or the different parties enter into negotiations

about government formation. The result of these negotiations is a government that is supported

by parliament and anytime this support is undermined or challenged, a confidence vote resolves

the issue. In presidential systems however, there is no mechanism for the resolution of conflicts

between the executive and the legislative. As a result, the conflict may be resolved through extra-

110

constitutional means. In Linz’s words: “Replacing a president who has lost the confidence of his

party or the people is an extremely difficult proposition. Even when polarization has intensified

to the point of violence and illegality, a stubborn incumbent may remain in office. By the time

the cumbersome mechanisms provided to dislodge him in favor of a more able and conciliatory

successor have done their work, it may be too late.” (Linz 1996:137-8)

However Linz’s analysis was criticized as partial and extrapolating from the experiences

of Latin American countries, Chile in particular. Donald Horowitz in particular contested Linz’s

findings based on the cases of Sri Lanka and Nigeria: “Linz’s quarrel is not with the presidency,

but with two features that epitomize the Westminster version of democracy: first, plurality

elections that produce a majority of seats by shutting out third-party competitors; and second,

adversary democracy, with its sharp divide between winners and losers, government and

opposition. Because these are Linz’s underlying objections, it is not difficult to turn his

arguments around against parliamentary systems, at least where they produce coherent majorities

and minorities…. Linz’s thesis boils down to an argument not against the presidency but against

plurality election, not in favor of parliamentary systems but in favor of parliamentary coalitions.”

(Horowitz 1996: 149)

It is interesting to note two things in this debate. First, the arguments presented on both

sides are subject to case selection bias. Indeed, each one of the two debaters extrapolates from a

very limited number of cases, and although both present extremely interesting insights to the way

political systems function, they are both vulnerable to inaccurate extrapolations from partial

cases. Second, it is interesting to note how Horowitz’s argument resembles the argument of this

book, where what matters is not the regime type but the number of veto players. But I return to

this point in the next section.