Tsebelis G. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

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TABLE 4.1

COUNTRY Plen

agen

Fin.

Init.

Cmt Re-

write

Time

Table

Fin.

Vot.

Lapse

Bill

Agenda

Control

Exec Dom

(Lijphart)

Austria 4 3

3 3

2 2

-0.044

5.47

Belgium 4 3

3 4

2 3

-0.170

1.98

Denmark 5 3

2 1

-0.106

2.28

Finland 5 3

3 4

3 2

-0.148

1.24

France 2 1

3 1

1 3

0.333

5.52(2.48)

Germany 4 3

3 4

2 2

-0.126

2.82

Greece 2 2

3 2

1 2

0.280

2.88

Iceland 5 3

3 1

2 1

-0.170

2.48

Ireland 1 1

1 4

2 2

0.519

3.07

Italy 6 3

3 4

2 2

-0.219

1.14

Luxembourg 3 3

3 3

2 4

-0.053

4.39

Netherlands 7 3

3 1

3 4

-0.527

2.72

Norway 4 3

3 4

2 2

-0.063

3.17

Portugal 3 1

3 3

2 3

0.147

2.09

Spain 4 1

1 4

2 2

0.221

4.36

Sweden 5 3

3 4

-0.427

3.42

Switzerland 3 3

3 4

2 4

-0.135

1 (8.59)

U. Kingdom 1 1

1 1

0.690

5.52

Columns 1-7 from Doering (1995)

Agenda control as calculated in this study from Doering’s (1995) measures

“Executive Dominance” from Lijphart Table 7.1 (1999:132)

For France and Switzerland the first number is the one reported, while the one in parenthesis is the result of

calculations regarding government duration.

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CHAPTER 5: REFERENDUMS

The mere possibility of a referendum introduces the preferences of the population in the

policymaking process. I will argue that this is equivalent to the introduction of a new veto player,

and the outcomes that prevail (whether the referendum is actually used or not) approximate

better the preferences of the public. In addition, policy stability in principal increases by the

introduction of a new veto player.

However, the most interesting part of referendums is agenda control. I revisit themes

developed in the introduction of this part, that is, whether the agenda setting process is

competitive or exclusive. The agenda setting of the referendum process is divided in two parts,

first who asks the question, and second who triggers the referendum. If both parts of the agenda

are controlled by the same player (whether an existing veto player, or a different actor in popular

initiatives) the referendum process eliminates all other veto players. So, the overall effect of

referendums on policy stability depends on issues of agenda control.

Finally, how much the preferences of the public are approximated by different types of

referendums also depends on the specific provisions of agenda control: if an existing veto player

controls both parts of the agenda (both asking the question and trigerring the referendum) he will

simply use referendums to eliminate the input of other veto players; if agenda control is

delegated through a competitive process, then the preferences of the public will be better

approximated.

The chapter is organized in five sections. Section I deals with the question of what

difference it makes if there is a possibility of referendums. In other words, what happens if the

people can participate directly in the legislative process? Section II deals with the institutional

differences among referendum processes. Some of them are controlled by existing veto players,

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others are delegated to popular initiative, and others split the agenda setting process into two

parts (triggering and asking the question) and delegate each one of them to a different actor. The

following three sections study each one of these processes more in detail.

I. Direct and Representative Democracy

What difference does it make if outcomes are selected directly by the people or indirectly

by the people’s representatives in parliament? For the proponents of referendums, decisions are

by definition better if they are made by the people. The most famous argument to that effect

comes from Rousseau (1947:85): “Sovereignty cannot be represented for the same reason that it

cannot be alienated; its essence is the general will, and that will must speak for itself, or it does

not exist; it is either itself or not itself; there is no intermediate possibility. The deputies of the

people, therefore, are not and cannot be their representatives; they can only be their

commissioners, and as such they are not qualified to conclude anything definitively. No act of

theirs can be law, unless it has been ratified by the people in person; and without that ratification

nothing is a law.”

We will revisit this quote at the end of the chapter. For the time being let us be less

normative and more abstract and claim that outcomes selected by parliament will be preferred

over the status quo by the a majority in parliament, while outcomes selected by a referendum

will be preferred by a majority of the population. The referendum result in a single dimension

would be the preference of the median voter, but in multiple dimensions such a median voter

very rarely exists. As we will see, the number of policy dimensions involved in a referendum is

an open question. Sometimes multiple issues are lumped together; other times, efforts are made

to separate issues and decide them one at a time. For example, referendums are sometimes used

to approve (or disapprove) whole constitutions; on the other hand, the Italian Constitutional

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Court has decided that it will exclude popular proposals containing “ such a plurality of

heterogeneous demands that there was a lack of a rational, unitary matrix that would bring it

under the logic of Article 75 of the Constitution” (Butler and Ranney 1994: 63-64).

This section will first make the argument that the number of underlying dimensions

makes very little difference for the argument: referendum selected results are extremely well

approximated by a median voter argument.

The second issue that we will address is that the

preferences of this median voter may be significantly different from the policy selected by

existing veto players.

a. “Median voter” preferences in referendums. In Chapter 2 we demonstrated that the

winset of the status quo when all people are voting is included in a circle (Y, d+2r), where Y is

the center of the yolk of the whole population of voters, d is the distance between Y and SQ, and

r the radius of the yolk of the whole population. An argument that I did not present in Chapter 2,

but can be found in Ferejohn et. al. (1984), is that the winset of the status quo contains a second

circle (Y, d-2r). As a result, the boundaries of the winset of the status quo are located between

two circles; both of them with center Y and one of them with radius (d+2r), and the other with

radius (d-2r)

We have also said that when the number of voters increases the radius of the yolk (r)

decreases on the average (Chapter 2). Consequently, for the millions of people who are the

potential participants in a referendum in most countries or states r is (most of the time)

Throughout this chapter I do not discuss referenda that require qualified majorities. There are few cases that the

law imposes a restriction to that effect (like a certain percentage of electors or voters (in Denmark up to 1953 45%

of electors, in the Weimar Republic 50% of electors, in New Zealand form 1908-1914 60% of voters), or a

congruence between majority of voters and majority of states (Switzerland, Australia)). In 1911 in New Zealand a

54% yes for prohibition had no effect, because the requirement was 60% of votes (Butler and Ranney (1978: 17).

All the arguments in the text hold for qualified majorities also as demonstrated in Chapter 2.

Obviously, the small circle exists only if d>2r, that is if the status quo is in distance from the center of the yolk

greater than the diameter of the yolk.

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exceptionally small. As a result, the winset of the status quo is contained between two circles

that differ little from each other: 4r, when r becomes smaller and smaller.

What the previous two paragraphs indicate is that for a large population, the median voter

may not exist but all median lines pass through a very small area (of radius r), so an “as if”

median can be very well approximated by the center Y of the yolk of the population. In addition,

the winset of the status quo for such a large population is also very well approximated by a circle

of radius d. In other words, the multiplicity of voters simplifies rather than complicates the

problem of identification of the median voter and the winset of the status quo. Note that through

this analysis the number of underlying policy dimensions becomes irrelevant. While in a single

dimension there is a median voter, in multiple dimensions an “as if” median voter (the center of

the yolk of the population) is a very good approximation.

INSERT FIGURE 5.1

Figure 5.1 provides a visual representation of the argument. The yolk of the population is

very small and has center Y. The winset of a point that has distance d from Y is the shaded area

in the figure, and is located between the two circles with radii (d+2r) and (d-2r), so it can be

approximated by the circle (Y, d).

INSERT FIGURE 5.2

b. Direct and Mediated Democracy. Denmark provides a couple of interesting examples

of the differences between direct and mediated democracy. As Vernon Bogdanor (1994: 72) puts

it: “It may be seem a paradox that the Single European Act, which could not have gained a

majority in the Folketing, received a majority in the country, while Maastricht, which enjoyed

the support of parties with 80 percent of the seats in the Folketing, was rejected by the voters in

1992.” Figure 5.2 helps us think the potential paradox through. Where would a parliamentary

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decision be located? If we know nothing about the parliament’s decision making except that it

requires a simple majority, then according to what we have said in this book it would be a

collective veto player, and the winset of the status quo would be located inside the circle (Y,

d+2r) where Y and r are the center and radius of the parliament’s yolk, and d is the distance

between the status quo and Y. If we need more accuracy, we would look at the intersection of

any three of the circles representing the different parties, that would lead to the shaded area in the

figure. If we know some additional information about parliament’s decisionmaking we can

incorporate it in the calculations, and identify the winset of the status quo more accurately. For

example, if we know that there is one parliamentary party that is certainly not included in the

parliamentary decision-making we can study the parliament as a collective veto player deciding

by qualified majority. Or, alternatively, if we know the parties that form the government, we will

identify the winset of the status quo by considering each one of them as a veto player and finding

the intersection of their winsets. If the parties forming the government are A, B, and C the

outcome will be in the heavily shaded lens in the figure.

There is no reason to believe that the two processes (direct and representative democracy)

will lead to the same outcome. Bowler and Donovan (1998) have made this point amply clear. In

addition, Lupia (1992, 1993) has studied the information shortcuts that can inform voters about

their interests in referendums. If we call Y’ the center of the yolk of the population, there is no

guarantee that Y’ and Y will be identical. It depends on the electoral system whether every

minority is represented in parliament. Even the most pure proportional representation systems

like Israel or the Netherlands cannot guarantee representation for minorities of .5% for example.

Systems with higher thresholds like Sweden’s 4% or Germany’s 5% exclude many more.

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Finally, plurality electoral systems can severely underrepresented third parties or even eliminate

them altogether.

Let me use an example known as the referendum paradox (Nurmi (1998: 336-37)) to

show one mechanism generating such a discrepancy. Suppose that there are 99 voters, and 9 MPs

(each MP represents 11 voters). In addition, there are two parties, party A with 2/3 of the votes

gets 6 MPs, and party B with 1/3 of the votes gets 3 MPs. This society has to vote on the

question whether X should replace the status quo. Let us assume that supporters of party A are

split 6 versus 5 in favor of the status quo, and that this pattern appears in every constituency,

while proponents of party B are unanimous in favor of change. The parliament of the country

would decide by votes 6 to 3 to preserve the status quo, while a referendum would have

produced change with votes 63 against 36. The example indicates that a policy that is supported

by almost 2/3 of the voters is rejected by 2/3 of their representatives in a country with a

proportional representation electoral system!

In the figure I have selected a different point as the median of the population. One can see

that the possible solutions under the two procedures have several points in common, but because

of the difference between Y and Y’ these solutions do not coincide. This is only part of the story

because there is no guarantee that the coalition prevailing inside the voters would be politically

the same as the coalition prevailing inside parliament. For example, if there is a government of

parties A, B, C, the outcome would have to be located inside the heavily shaded area, while the

outcome of a referendum could be anywhere inside the hatched area in the figure.

So, the outcomes of direct and representative democracy may be different indeed. But,

can we locate these outcomes? Or, can we have an algorithm that will help us understand in

which areas the results will be? What we know from Chapter 1 is that the more veto players, the

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smaller the winset of the status quo, and the more the position of the corresponding median will

be respected. But this statement compares outcomes within procedures, not across direct and

representative democracy. For example, if a single party had a parliamentary majority in our

Figure 5.2 the outcome would be located in its own ideal point. If parties A, B, and C are veto

players and share control of the parliamentary agenda the winset of the status quo shrinks and the

heavily shaded area is closer to the parliament’s median.

There are lots of debates in the literature about the presumed or potential advantages and

disadvantages of the two procedures. For proponents of direct democracy there are two main

advantages: The first, relates to outcomes that closer fit the people’s preferences (see quote by

Rousseau above). The second is relevant to the education of citizens to democratic values. De

Tockqueville has expressed this idea best by claiming: “Town meetings are to liberty what

primary schools are to science: they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use

and how to enjoy it.” For critics, from Plato to Stuart Mill, to Schumpeter, to Sartori the major

question is whether the average citizen has information and expertise to judge what best

advances collective interests. Riker (1982) has added one additional issue: who controls the

agenda is of major importance when questions are asked. Finally, legislation by referendums has

raised objections on the basis that minority rights may be taken away. Gamble (1997) makes

such a claim empirically, while Bowler and Donovan (1998) and Frey and Goette (1998)

disagree on the magnitude of his results.

My goal in this section (or in the whole book for that matter) is not to make a statement

about which procedure is better, but to claim that there are differences in their outcomes and

This argument is identical to Kalandrakis’ (1999) formal result that in equilibrium coalition governments will be

less extreme than governments from two party systems. It is also consistent with the empirical results presented by

Huber and Powell (1994) that multiparty governments are more representative of the median voter than single party

majoritarian governments. However, both these studies do not differentiate between the parliament’s median and the

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study the effects of such differences for decisionmaking in political systems. If a parliamentary

decision has to be ratified by the population (as is frequently the case in constitutional matters)

then the outcome has to be located in the intersection of the parliamentary and the popular

winsets. In other words, referenda create one additional veto player in the decisionmaking

process: the people. There are two results from this introduction of a new veto player: First, in

principal, it becomes more difficult to change the status quo, as I argued in Chapters 1 and 2. The

qualifier “in principal” is because as we shall see below sometimes existing veto players are

eliminated by the referendum process. Second, the final outcomes will approximate the

preferences of the median voter better when the possibility of a referendum exists (whether the

actual decision is made by a referendum or not).

Most of the traditional literature on referendums does not accept these points. In fact, it

sees stability as contradictory to the will of the median voter; so, preferences on referendums

reflect either one or the other. Here is how Butler and Ranney (1994: 21) summarize the

conventional wisdom: “As Magleby concluded in Direct Legislation, people who believe in

undiluted representative democracy place the highest value on the virtues of stability,

compromise, moderation, and access for all segments of the community, regardless of how

small, and seek institutional arrangements that insulate fundamental principles from short-term

fluctuations in public opinion. People who believe in coming as close as possible to direct

democracy place the highest value on the virtues of change, participation, competition, conflict,

and majority rule and seek institutional arrangements that maximize rapid and full responses to

what popular majorities want.”

There is empirical evidence in the literature in favor of both my expectations. With

respect to the protection of the status quo, both Immergut (1992) and Neidhart (1970) argue that

voters’ median.