Transcript Making and breaking government

Positive Political Theory
Prof. Francesco Zucchini
Veto Players
George Tsebelis
Chapter 5: Referendums
Chapter 6: Federalism, Bicameralism, Qualified Majorities
Marta Osojnik
17th November 2009
Referendums (1)
The mere possibility of the referendum introduces the
preferences of the population in the policy making process.
What are the main characteristics?
 introduction of the new veto player
 policy stability in principle increases
 outcomes that prevail approximate better the
preferences of the public
 agenda control
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Referendums (2)
AGENDA CONTROL
 who asks the question
 who triggers the referendum
If both parts of the agenda are controlled by the same
player, VP will use referendums in order to eliminate
all other veto players.
If agenda setting process is delegated through a
competitive process, then the preferences of the
public will be better approximated
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Direct and Representative Democracy (1)
What difference does it make if outcomes are
selected by the people or indirectly by the
people’s representatives in parliament?
Rousseau (1947: 85)
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(a) ‘Median voter’ preferences in referendums
 winset of the SQ is located
between two circles (Y, d+2r
and Y, d-2r)
 since the yolk is decreasing with
the number of people that go to
vote  the winset of SQ is
located between two cricles that
differ little from each other
 for a large population the
median voter may not exist but
all median lines pass through
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)
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(b) Direct and Mediated Democracy
 difference between direct
(W’(SQ)) and mediated (W(SQ))
democracy
 no guarantee that the two
processes will lead to the same
outcome 
How can we locate these two
different outcomes?
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Direct and Mediated Democracy
Advantages and disadvantages of the referendums:

PROPONENTS:
- the outcomes fit more closely with people’s preferences
- education of citizens to democratic values

CRITICS:
- does the average citizen have information and expertise to
judge what best advances collective interests

Tsebelis: what are the effects of differences for decision
making?
(the outcome has to be located in the intersection of the
parliamentary and the popular winsets  referendums create
an additional veto player – the people)
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Institutions regulating referendums (1)
CLASSIFICATION OF REFERENDUMS BY DIFFERENT AUTHORS
Smith (1975): two criteria to elaborate referendums – ‘control’ and
‘hegemonic effect’
Butler and Ranney (1978): government controlled referendums,
b) constitutionally required referendums, c) referendums by
popular petition, d) popular initiatives

recently: the strategic aspects of referendums (agenda control)
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Institutions regulating referendums (2)
Tsebelis uses the classification similar to the one used by
Hug (1999):
a)
b)
c)
Are the referendums required?
Are they ‘active’ or ‘passive’ (initiative by the people or not)?
Who controls the agenda (the government or the opposition)?
Tsebelis ‘upgrades’ Hug’s classification:
a)
b)
whether or not there will be a referendum or not = ‘triggering’
the exact wording of the question
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Institutions regulating referendums (3)
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Institutions regulating referendums (4)
(1)
Required referendums
- the government is obliged to submit a policy to the voters
- no referendum initiative is undertaken
- a particular document has to be ratified by the people in
order to be enacted (often applies to constitutional changes)
(2)
Veto player referendums
- referendum is not required
- decision belongs to one of the existing VP
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(3)
(4)
Popular veto
- existing VP formulates the question, BUT
- the triggering is prerogative of a different agent
(e.g. population)
Popular initiative
- initiative does not come from the existing VP
- initiative derives from e.g. political group that collected the
required signatures (state level in the USA, Switzerland)
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Veto Players Referendums (1)
Decision making:
 Under which conditions
possible AS would call for
referendum?
a) stable coalition of A,B,C
(‘parliamentary
government’)
b) any possible coalition
between A,B,C,D,E is
possible (‘presidential
system’)
 two possible agenda
setters:
A and E
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Veto Players Referendum (2)
A as the agenda setter:
 winset of A’ instead of W
(SQ) – player A can
introduce referendum and
obtain A’ as an outcome
 ‘presidential system’: only
coalition A,D,E can approve
points inside (A,AA’) circle –
A has to select this outcome
in order to get the preferred
outcome
 ‘parliamentary system’:
coalition A,B,C (but there is
no point that all three prefer
to A’ because A’ is in the
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unanimity core of A,B,C
Veto Players Referendums (3)
E as the agenda setter:
 winset of E’ instead of W
(SQ) – player E can
introduce the referendum
and obtain E’ as a result
 three possible coalitions:
ABE, ADE, CDE
a) ‘presidential system’: E will
select ADE
b) ‘parliamentary system’: E 
the advantage of referendum
AS to negotiate different
government (if the parties
want to stick together  E
triggers referendum 
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government looses
Popular initiatives, Popular veto
Required referendums and Veto players referendums
are the referendums where the agenda setter enjoys
monopoly power while
Popular initiatives and Popular veto
are different kinds of referendums
(the ‘triggering’ not in their domain).
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 Popular initiatives
 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 process is)
 we should focus on the process of selection of the
agenda setter (e.g. volunteers, professionals).
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 Popular vetoes
 triggered by existing VPs when they want to cancell
other VP
 non VP will select a referendum if the government
proposed result is not inside the winset of the median
voter
 BUT it can happen that a ‘triggering’ actor can force
the referendum without real success since the
existing VP can postpone it so the balance of force
will be in their power or modify the SQ so that the
referendum will be either cancelled or postponed
further (Italian ‘divorce’ example).
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Conclusion I
 referendums significantly alter the rules and the outcomes of the



a)
b)
c)
legislative process
introduction of additional VP – the median voter of the
population
if the same VP is able to trigger the referendum and ask the
question  traditional VPs are eliminated
the differences among referendums depend on WHO controls
the agenda:
existing VP: strengthens him at the expense of others
popular initiative: it favors the groups that can affect the agenda
competitive agenda setting process: benefits the median voter
 advantages and disadvantages
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Chapter 6:
Federalism, Bicameralism and Qualified Majorities
 Definition of the term ‘federal’ by Riker (1964):
(1) Two levels of government rule the same land and people
(2) Each level has at least one area of jurisdiction in which it is
autonomous
(3) There is some guarantee of the autonomy of each government in its
own sphere
 Tsebelis observes two different features of federal governments:
- bicameralism (with the second chamber having an effective veto)
- use of qualified majorities in policy making
Tsebelis argues that each one of these structures generates more VPs 
federal countries have ‘ceteris paribus’ more VPs than unitary ones
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Federalism (1)
(1)
FISCAL FEDERALISM
Two important differences between federal and unitary countries:
a)
Hayek (1939): local governments and consumers have better
information about local conditions and preferences therefore
they will make better decisions than national governments;
b)
Tiebout (1956): focused on the effects of the competition
among jurisdictions since people can ‘vote with their feet’ and
argues that federalism provide people with the choice among
different menus of public good.
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 previous two approaches ignored the question of incentives of
politicians to provide PUBLIC GOODS and PRESERVE
MARKETS
 Weingast (1995): focused on the fact that markets need
protection and government strong enough to be able to resist
the threats; ‘state strong enough to protect private markets is
strong enough to confiscate the wealth of its citizens’
 DIFFERENT MECHANISMS enabling strong but limited
governments by different authors:
•
•
Przeworski: ‘stable democracy’
Weingast: ‘the rule of law’
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Federalism (2)
(2) THE INSTITUTIONS OF FEDERALISM
Hicks (1978) upgrades Riker’s definition of federalism in order to
point out the importance of the study of the institutions of
federalism.
 federal system has the dual purpose of creating a nation and
preserving the identity of its units
‘The Constitution in a federal system will provide for:
(1) a probably large Assembly representative of all citizens and
chosen from the units (or States), most likely in proportion to
their relative populations;
(2) a House of States or Senate, considerably smaller but normally
providing strictly equal representation of all States…’.
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Federalism (3)
 six players form two groups
(upper and lower chamber)
 U1,U2,U3 and L1,L2,L3
 the requirement for the
replacement of the SQ is
congruent majority in the two
houses ( which means that
some of the previous
majorities (like L3, U1, U2,
U3) are now invalidated,
because they do not
represent majorities in both
houses)
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Federalism (4)
 for QM similar argument as
for bicameralism
 let us consider the case of a
5/6 qualified majority
 winset of the SQ is empty
(there is no coalition
including 5/6 players that
agrees to a replacement of
the SQ)
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Bicameralism (1)
(1)
BICAMERAL AND MULTICAMERAL DIVERSITY

the power of the second chamber varies (sometimes the
agreement of the upper chamber is necessary for the adoption
of legislation, sometimes not)
the chambers may have a different policy position (elected
from different constituencies  one represents the population
and the other the states; or with different electoral system; or
they may simply have different decisionmaking rules 
Senate’s filibuster rule which does not exist in the House) BUT
even when the two chambers are almost the same, it does not
follow that differences are eliminated (e.g. Italian case
‘violenza sessuale’)
bicameral legislatures may therefore introduce a second
institutional VP (if the second chamber has the possibility to
veto legislation)  what Tsebelis focuses on


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Bicameralism (2)
 HOWEVER, while we are speaking of ‘bicameralism’
from Tsebelis’ point of view, it is easy to generalize to
any number of chambers
For example:
 the American political system requires the agreement
of three VPs (president, legislature, federalism)
 EU (European Commission, European Parliament,
Council of Ministers)
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(2) Strong bicameralism with weak parties
 the two chambers are drawn in
two dimensions (away from
each other)  any coalition in
each one of them is possible
(congruent majorities)
 bicameral core LU (it cannot be
defeated by this decisionmaking rule)
 position of SQ (calculation
performed in two different ways:
exactly and by approximation)
 the closer the SQ to the
bicameral core, the smaller the
winset of SQ (policy stability
increases)
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Bicameralism (3)
 addresses the issue of agenda
setting process
 usually if one chamber makes a
proposal to the other, they
select the point closest to them
from the W (SQ)
 most countries adopted more
complicated system called
‘navette system’ (the bill shuttles
from one chamber to the other
until agreement is reached or
until some other stopping rule is
applied)
 Tsebelis and Money:
‘impatience’ of each chamber as
an additional variable
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Bicameralism (4)
(3) QUALIFIED MAJORITIES
 How can qualified majorities increase policy stability?
 How pervasive qualified majorities are even if not
explicitly specified by formal institutions?
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(1) Core and winset of qualified majorities
 consider the pentagon
composed of any 5 points
(the unanimity core)  any
point inside this area cannot
be defeated by a unanimous
agreement of the 5 players
 select all possible
combinations of 5 players,
with the intersection of their
unanimity cores  any point
in this area cannot be
defeated by any 5/7 QM
 unanimity core more frequent
than the bicameral core
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Bicameralism (4)
Joseph Greenberg (1979):
 such a core always exists if q > n / (n+1) where q is the required
majority and n is the dimensionality of the policy space
a) unanimity core always exists (n points define at most (n-1)
dimensional space
b) for points outside the core the winset of the SQ is not empty
c) IF the the QM core exists and the SQ approaches it, the winset
of the SQ shrinks (policy stability increases)
 a comparison indicates that the bicameral core is a single
dimensional object and QM is in general in n dimensions (the
shape of the core, affects the size of the winset of SQ – political
stability)
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Bicameralism (5)
(2) PERVASIVNESS OF QUALIFIED MAJORITIES
 as already seen QM impose additional restrictions on the W
(SQ)
•
•
•
as the required QM threshold increases, the W (SQ) shrinks
unlike the majority W (SQ) which is almost never empty, the
QM W (SQ) may be empty
q-cohesion of the collective player is of an extreme
importance for the size of the QM winset of (SQ) (policy stability
decreases when q-cohesion increases)
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Bicameralism (6)
(4) BICAMERALISM AND QUALIFIED MAJORITIES COMBINED
What happens if bicameralism is combined with
qualified majorities such that one chamber decides
by simple majority but the other decides by qualified
majority?
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Bicameralism (7)
 upper chamber: unanimity
 consequences: a) policy
stability increases (W(SQ))
shrinks, b) outcomes shift in
the favor of the less flexible
chamber (only one point L*
U* survives)
 in one dimensional space
the core of the bicameral
system expands  more
dificult to upset the SQ
(points between U1’ and U3
that could be modified under
congruent majority are now
invulnerable
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Bicameralism (8)
Keith Krehbiel (1998) in Pivotal Politics:
 for ‘pivotal politics’ the policy space is one dimensional
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Bicameralism (9)
 Tsebelis adds another
dimension;
 Depending on where the
alternative proposal is, the
pivotal player might change
(PAA);
 If one increases the
dimensions and the
alternatives to the SQ almost
anyone of a particular group
of players will become
‘pivotal’
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Conclusion II
 there is no direct way of translating existing
institutions into the number and distances of VPs
 some institutions have similar effects (federalism
increases the number of VPs), while others alter their
effect on VPs on the basis of specific institutional
provisions (who controls the agenda of referendums)
 results of VP analysis depend on the ideological
positions of VPs: some of them may be absorbed
(even if they are not absorbed they may converge or
diverge which will have serious implications on policy
stability)
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