Tsebelis G. Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

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If different groups can become agenda setters in a referendum by winning the right to

present their question to the electorate (signature collection), the legislative outcome will depend

on how competitive the selection process is. If all potential players are included in the selection

process and if voters are informed the only way that one can select proposals that will not only

defeat the status quo but other proposals as well is to make proposals that are supported by a

majority, which means that the process will converge towards the preferences of the median

voter. This result is a multidimensional generalization of the argument presented in Chapter 3

and it is possible because the winset of the status quo can be approximated by a circle as I

demonstrated in Figure 5.1.

If some of the potential agenda setters are excluded from the process, then the remaining

ones may be more extreme and the legislative outcome may be further away from the

preferences of the median voter, if no group with similar to the median voter preferences was

allowed to enter the agenda setting process. Remember what we said in Chapter 1: there is

significant power in agenda setting.

As a consequence of this analysis, we have to focus on the process of selection of the

agenda setter, and assess how competitive it is. If, for example what is required is signature

selection by volunteers, then, demands that are supported by a majority of the population are

likely to get the volunteers necessary for their placement on the ballot, and initiatives that do not

have enough volunteers are not likely to be supported by a majority. Consequently, such a

process is a competitive one, and one can expect that the outcome will be located close to the

preferences of the median voter.

If, however, what is requested for an issue to be placed on the ballot is signature selection

by remunerated professionals, organized groups (even with ideal points far away from the

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median voter) are the only ones able to participate. In this case the selection process for agenda

setting will translate in outcomes that may be away from the preferences of the median voter. In

all cases, the selected outcome has to be closer to the preferences of the median voter than the

status quo.

So, again, despite the fact that the median voter makes the final decision, the result

depends crucially on the preferences of the agenda setter.

Like veto players referendums eliminate the existing veto players in legislatures, so do

popular initiatives. In fact, through popular initiatives the whole legislative process is replaced

by referendums. It is possible that existing veto players will try to avoid referendum challenges.

However the only points cannot be successfully challenged are the ones close to the “as if”

median voter (the center of the yolk of the population). Again, this point might not even be part

of the winset of the status quo, which means that the existing veto players are cancelled because

the same player controls the whole referendum agenda.

V. Popular vetoes.

Non-mandatory referenda will be triggered by the actors with jurisdiction as a function of

their own preferences. Existing veto players will select a referendum if they want to cancel other

veto players as I argued in section II. Non-veto players will select a referendum if the

government proposed result is not inside the winset of the median voter. Actually, if they believe

so as the following story of the Italian divorce referendum indicates.

In December of 1970 the Divorce Law was enacted in Italy for the first time. The most

important provision of this law was that if the partners had been “legally separated” for five

years they could obtain a divorce. The response of the Catholic Church was immediate. The

Pope revealed that he had send diplomatic notes to the government, and the clericals rose the

I have to repeat here that the radius of the yolk is assumed 0 otherwise, the selection of a point that is further from

the center of the yolk than the status quo by up to 2r could not be excluded.

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issue of a referendum to “abrogate” the new law. In practice, although such referendums were

specified by Article 75 of the Italian constitution, they had never taken place, and there was no

legislation on its procedures. The government bowing to Vatican pressures passed such a law

before the Divorce Law itself, so that Catholics could force a referendum to “abrogate” such a

law when it passed. In fact, in February 1971 the Italian Bishops issued a declaration that

marriage was indissoluble and 1.4 million signatures were collected by June (compared to the

required 500,000).

What is interesting to see is the reaction of the political establishment to this threat of a

referendum that was not welcome by the leadership of either the Communists or the Christian

Democrats. First, there was an attempt to put forward a bill (in July of 1971) to make

referendums on laws protecting ethnic and religious minorities or on marriage inadmissible.

Then, the Communists introduced a new divorce bill improving the law in the hope that the new

bill would replace the status quo (the existing divorce law) so that the process would have to start

over again. When this maneuver failed (mainly because of the parliamentary timetable) the

parliament was dissolved a year early in order to avoid the referendum being held in 1972. The

new parliament had a slight right wing majority, but the Christian Democrats did not try to repeal

the law because they did not want to replace their alliance with the socialists with an alliance

with the fascists who were also against the Divorce Law. Finally, the referendum took place in

1974, three years after the signatures were collected (Butler and Ranney (1994)). The result was

not foreseen by the proponents of the referendum, or by the Italian political establishment. It was

a 60-40 defeat of the abrogation procedure, a humiliating outcome for the clerical coalition.

This account indicates that while the triggering player can force a referendum, the

existing veto players can postpone it so that the balance of forces will improve in their favor, or

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modify the status quo so that the referendum will be either cancelled or postponed further. These

reactions of exiting veto players aim at capturing the preferences of the median voter.

The accounts I have presented so far mainly assumed well informed voters. The situation

is altered significantly under the more realistic assumption of incomplete information. For Wolf

Linder (1994: 144) writing on Swiss Democracy “Money is... the single most important factor

determining direct legislation outcomes.” According to his account campaign spending

inequalities rise to ratios of 1:20 or 1:50, and “in Switzerland as in the American states, the high

spending side wins 80-90 per cent of the campaigns. It is exceptional for underdogs to win

against ‘big money’.” Lowenstein (1982) refines this claim for American States and argues that

when the side supporting the status quo significantly overspends the proponents of change, the

odds are strongly in favor of the status quo. These arguments can be captured by an incomplete

information model, according to which money is spent to persuade an uninformed median voter

that one proposal is closer to his ideal point than another (regardless of the actual location of the

three points).

V. Conclusions

Referendums, that is, the possibility of direct legislation, significantly alter the rules and

the outcomes of the legislative process. The mere possibility of introducing a legislative choice

to the approval of the people introduces one additional veto player into the decision-making

process: the median voter of the population. Although in multiple dimensions such a voter does

not exist, as I argued in Section I an “as if” median voter can be identified the predictions will be

very accurate approximations of the results. If the same player controls both triggering and the

question of a referendum then traditional legislative veto players are eliminated from the

decisionmaking process as we saw in sections III and IV. Indeed the analysis indicated that

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instead of the winset of the status quo the relevant calculations involved the winset of the point

that the referendum agenda setter can achieve.

The differences among referendums depend on who controls the agenda (triggering and

question). If it is an existing veto player it strengthens him at the expense of the others. If it is

popular initiative, it favors the groups that can affect the agenda. If the agenda setting process is

competitive, it favors the median voter. As a result, existing veto players have to consider not

only the winset of the status quo, but the preferences of the “as if” median voter as well.

Proponents of direct democracy argue that it expresses the will of the people, while

opponents discuss the lack of information of the population that prevents it from making right

decisions. We saw that the preferences of the median voter in parliament and in the population

may not coincide, and that the coalitions formed inside each one of these bodies may be different

so that the outcomes of direct and representative democracy may be different.

As for the argument that the will of the people is expressed through referendums that we

saw made by Rousseau it is at least widely optimistic.

It does not take into account the role of

agenda setting (triggering and asking the question). These two aspects of agenda setting may

belong to the jurisdiction of a single player (veto player referendums, popular initiative) or be

shared by two different players (mandatory referendums, popular vetoes).

As we saw, if the agenda setting is delegated to one veto player it strengthens this actor

vis a vis the other veto players. If the process of agenda setting becomes competitive, then the

preferences of the median voter become more respected. As a result of this analysis the median

voter’s preferences will be approximated better in countries or states with popular initiative.

Or, more to the point that it was incorrect. It would have been optimistic if Rousseau was referring to popular

referendums. However, I was very surprised to learn that he was in fact speaking so highly of referendums

organized by the government as Manin (2001) documents. In this case maybe V. Auriol’s assessment cited earlier is

more accurate.

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Countries with popular veto will be more distant from the median voter’s preferences but not as

much as countries or states with mandatory referendums, or with veto player ones.

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d+2r

d-2r

FIGURE 5.1

Winset of a largegroupof voters

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Yes

Required

Popular

Initiative

Questions defining different categories of referendums

VP referendum

Is question asked by

one or more existing VPs

Is referendum triggered by

one or more existing VPs

Is referendum required

FIGURE 5.3

Yes

Popular

Veto

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