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The Veto Player Approach in Macro-Comparative Politics: Concepts and Measurement

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Reform Processes and Policy Change

Part of the book series: Studies in Public Choice ((SIPC,volume 16))

Abstract

Over the last decade, analytical tools in modern macro-comparative analysis have become increasingly sophisticated. Yet our concern with problems of causal inferences has, to a large extent, over-shadowed the equally important matters of conceptualization and measurement. Both the operationalization of highly elaborated analytical concepts and the empirical data employed are often crude and unsuitable for elaborate analysis. Furthermore, macro-comparative analysis has been criticized with regard to conceptual issues. It is claimed that highly aggregated data analysis lacks a micro-foundation and thus renders causal assumptions from structural data doubtful. This chapter focusses on veto player theory that currently attracts extensive attention in political science research and might be viable in order to mitigate the above mentioned analytical weaknesses. The chapter distinguishes between a veto point analysis, which has most analytical problems mentioned above, and veto player analysis. The latter has a micro-foundation rooted in rational choice theory. As veto player analysis is still flawed with regard to accounting for actors’ preferences and institutional settings, this chapter introduces a novel veto player index that is time variant for both aspects and thus achieves a fundamental improvement in veto player analysis. Although I do not overcome all analytical problems here, the new index is certainly a fundamental improvement for the veto player analysis.

The first version of this chapter was presented at the conference “Reform processes and policy change: How do veto players determine decision-making in modern democracies” at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), 14–16 May 2009. I thank the participants of this workshop and George Tsebelis for comments and encouragement. The results of this chapter are derived from the research project “Environmental Pollution as a Global Phenomenon” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). I thank Christoph Oberst, Nils Düpont, Thomas Behm, Konstantin Baltz, Jesse Lehrke and Stefanie Korte for data collection and helpful comments. Further, I thank Esther Seha for commenting on and editing the chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In modern democracies, there could also be agenda setters other than governments. However, I neglect this aspect since in parliamentary democracies governments are the agenda setter most of the time (Döring et al. 1995; Bräuninger and Debus 2009). In the political system of the United States, the Congress acts as an agenda setter above all the majority parties (Krehbiel 1998; Cameron 2000; Cox and McCubbins 2005). Another exception is the European Union’s increased status as agenda setter. This aspect is not accounted for as it would complicate veto player illustration and its inclusion would not change the basic idea of the chapter.

  2. 2.

    The analytical tools for identifying the win set of collective actors are (a) preferences, (b) status quo, and (c) the cohesion of individual veto players in a particular issue area. I do not consider the complex interaction of variables in this chapter and focus instead on established operationalizations of the veto player approach in macro-comparative analysis. However, I will get back to these aspects in the conclusion of this chapter.

  3. 3.

    The indices of Colomer and Huber et al. are rather similar in empirical terms to Schmidt’s index although they analytically stress slightly different aspects. Schmidt’s index correlates with 0.79 with Colomer’s and Huber et al.’s indices for the 23 OECD countries considered in this chapter. The latter two correlate with 0.87. We included the 23 OECD countries because we could obtain data for only these countries concerning the preferences over time, that is, available party manifesto data (see below).

  4. 4.

    Based on Crepaz’ publications, it appears as if he has significantly altered Lijphart’s indices. In fact however, he has adopted Lijphart’s measures one-to-one. I thank Markus Crepaz for sending me his data set.

  5. 5.

    The average index of variance (standard deviation/mean) within the 23 OECD countries is for polcon3 = 0.211 and for polcon5 = 0.084.

  6. 6.

    The data is available on George Tsebelis’ webpage: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/tsebelis/veto_players_data.

  7. 7.

    Tsebelis (2002: Chap. 8 ; Tsebelis and Chang 2004) uses a two-dimensional model. However, these data are not open to the public and the two dimensions chosen (three left/right indices from expert judgements on the one hand and a “pro-friendly relationship to the USSR versus anti” from Laver and Hunt’s expert judgements on the other) may not be independent and analytically distinct. All indicators measure various aspects of the left/right dimension.

  8. 8.

    I did, however, not consider the two super-majority rules characteristic of the US’ political system, the filibuster in the Senate and the President’s veto that may both have expanded the US’ range.

  9. 9.

    This method of identifying party preferences has further advantages. First, it is possible to obtain a measure for the saliency of respective issue dimensions. Thereby, one can construct indifference curves which are essential to veto player theory (Jahn 2010a). Second, this measure of preferences also allows for measuring the coherence of individual parties over time. This is also pivotal for veto player analysis since actors’ coherence is another important feature of veto player theory (Jahn and Oberst 2009). As the inclusion of these factors would increase the complexity of this chapter, I leave the elaboration of these concepts to later publications. The data can be downloaded from http://partypositions.uni-greifswald.de/

  10. 10.

    Tsebelis seems to use the second chamber party which is ideologically furthest away from the most radical party in government and which takes a stand on the opposite side of an ideological dimension. However, this is not really appropriate because the second chambers are collective actors.

  11. 11.

    The same logic of anticipated impact has been analyzed in terms of “the politics of negative power” for the President of the United States (Cameron 2000).

  12. 12.

    I also do not consider the Norwegian “second chamber” (lagting) as it is part of the parliament (storting). The same applies to the Icelandic second chamber (Nethri Deild) which was abolished in 1991 (Eythorsson and Jahn 2009: 197).

  13. 13.

    Since I have no data for the preferences of the presidents over time, I use the party preferences of the president’s party from Party Manifesto Data.

  14. 14.

    Since it is difficult to include all government changes, I have decided for units of analysis on a quarterly basis for each country from 1950 to 2005.

  15. 15.

    Jones and Lee (2008) draw conclusions about party coherence in party systems from the incentives of personal votes (the stronger the element of personal votes, the more incoherent the parties in the party system). However, this indicator is also time-invariant and treats all parties within a party system similarly. Both assumptions are not realistic. The same applies to Depauw and Martin (2009) index which is based on roll-call analysis. So far the only systematic comparative study, even though still time-invariant, which uses parties as a unit of analysis has recently been presented by Warwick (2006) in the context of his analysis of policy horizons. However, his study includes only parties in those West European countries with a tradition of coalition governments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Greifswald, Baderstr. 6/7, 17489, Greifswald, Germany

    Detlef Jahn

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, 68131, Germany

    Thomas König

  2. Mannheim Center for European Research, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, 68131, Germany

    Marc Debus

  3. Dept. Political Science, University of Michigan, S. State St. 505, Ann Arbor, 48109-1045, USA

    George Tsebelis

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Jahn, D. (2011). The Veto Player Approach in Macro-Comparative Politics: Concepts and Measurement. In: König, T., Debus, M., Tsebelis, G. (eds) Reform Processes and Policy Change. Studies in Public Choice, vol 16. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5809-9_3

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