GV101 Lent Term Lecture, Reading and Class Notes

LT Week 12: Models of Government: Regime Types and Veto Players

Reading

Veto Players
- Veto player theory argues that important characteristics of any country’s
institutional structure are determined by its configuration of veto players
- A veto player is an individual (such as a president) or collective actor (such as a
legislative chamber) whose agreement is necessary for a change of the political
status quo
- Two types of veto players:
- Institutional veto players
- Institutional veto players are those generated by a country’s
constitution
- ‘Identity of institutional veto players if fixed across time as
long as constitution remains the same
- For example, the US Constitution identifies actors like the
president, the Congress, and the Senate as institutional veto
players because it gives these actors the right to block
legislative changes to the status quo
- Partisan Veto Players
- Partisan veto players are those generated by the political
game
- In other words, partisan veto players aren’t specified in a
constitution but are determined by the way political
competition plays out in a given country
- Identity of partisan veto players changes with the changes of
political competition
- For example, particular parties in a legislature or a coalition
government might be considered partisan veto players if
they’re in a position to block changes to the status quo
- The more veto players there are, the harder it is to reach an agreement on a
new policy to replace the status quo policy
- It becomes particularly difficult to reach an agreement on a new policy if the
veto players share very different preferences over what the new policy should
be
- In effect, policy stability will increase with both the number of veto players in a
country as well as their ideological divergence
- Countries with many veto players with conflicting preferences are expected to
be characterized by high policy stability, small shifts in policy, and weak
agenda-setting powers

Majoritarian or Consensus Democracy?

Majoritarian vision of democracy
- Elections are events in which citizens choose between two alternative teams of
politicians

, - Whichever team wins an electoral majority forms the government and
implements the policies it ran on during the election campaign

Consensus vision of democracy
- Elections are events in which citizens choose representatives from as wide a
range of social groups as possible
- These agents are then entrusted to bargain over policy on behalf of the citizens
in the legislature
- Elections are there to provide citizens with the opportunity to choose
representatives who’ll be effective advocates for their interests when
bargaining over policy finally begins after the election




- Federal countries disperse power across different levels of government
- Unitary countries concentrate power in the national government
- Bicameral countries disperse power between two legislative chambers (A
legislative chamber or house is a deliberative assembly within a legislature which
generally meets and votes separately from the legislature's other chambers)
- Unicameral countries concentrate power in a single legislative chamber

Political Representation
- Formalistic Representation
- Formalistic representation has to do with the formal procedures by which
representatives are authorized to act and held accountable for their
actions
- Majoritarian view on FP
- Representatives (legislators, parties, governments) are
authorized to wield power whenever they receive majority
support
- Consensus view on FP

, - Representatives don’t need to have received majority support
for them to wield power
- Instead, power is to be distributed among political actors
in proportion to their electoral size
- As a result, there should be a close connection between the
percentage of votes representatives receive and the
percentage of policymaking power they enjoy
- Substantive Representation
- Substantive representation occurs when representatives take actions in
line with the substantive and ideological interests of those they
represent
- Substantive representation is often studied in terms of ideological
congruence
- Substantive representation is high when representatives are ideologically
congruent with the preferences of the citizens
- In other words, substantive representation is high when representatives hold
the same policy positions as the citizens
- Descriptive Representation
- Descriptive representation has to do with whether representatives
resemble and therefore “stand for” their constituents
- It calls for representatives who share the same characteristics, such as race,
gender, religion, and class, as those they represent
- It requires that parties, legislatures, and governments accurately reflect the
full range of diversity that exists in society.

Lecture

Veto Players

, - Issue here is that two of the Senators decided not to support changes to some of the
policies that require a supermajority for this legislation to pass
- Grid-lock: no policy change




- Brazil needs a lot of approval from Congress to achieve policy changes