Institutional veto players and cabinet formation: The veto control hypothesis reconsidered

Abstract

Are potential cabinets more likely to form when they control institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority vetoes? Existing evidence for a causal effect of veto control has been weak. This article presents evidence for this effect on the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 parliamentary and semi‐presidential democracies between 1955 and 2012. It also shows that the size of the effect varies systematically across political‐institutional contexts. The estimated causal effect was greater in countries that eventually abolished the relevant veto institutions. It is suggested that the incidence of constitutional reform is a proxy for context‐specific factors that increased the incentives for veto control and simultaneously provided a stimulus for the weakening of institutional veto power.

Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarism: patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies

“…Flexibility Duration-weighted average of cabinet types, based on the following ranking: 0 = majority cabinet .5 = formal minority cabinet 1 = substantial minority cabinet Values reflect the house with greater overall flexibility in the period under consideration. Strøm (1990) and Döring and Manow (2016) for lower houses, Eppner and Ganghof (2017) for upper houses, own data collection based on case-specific sources.…”

“…It thus lacks the power and legitimacy to change the overall character of democracy, even when its electoral system differs substantially from that of the lower house. On the other hand, if a directly elected upper house can also dismiss the cabinet in a no-confidence vote, it is likely to become too powerful (see Eppner and Ganghof 2017). If the composition between the two chambers -the two principals of the cabinet -differs substantially, parliamentarism and bicameralism get into conflict, so that the institutional configuration is unlikely to be stable in the long-run.…”

Bicameralism and government formation: does bicameral incongruence affect bargaining delays?

“…In particular, Lijphart (1984Lijphart ( , 1987Lijphart ( , 1999 conjectured that cabinet builders tend to form oversized coalitions in order to control strong second chambers (see also Sjölin, 1993). More recently, it has been found that those government coalitions holding a majority of seats in each chamber are more likely to form (Druckman et al, 2005;Eppner and Ganghof, 2017) and have a substantially longer life (Druckman and Thies, 2002) in comparison to those that do not control the upper chamber. As previously noted, however, this literature has primarily focused on the institutional prerogatives of the two chambersthat is, on the degree of symmetry in the powers of the two houses.…”

Faire Repräsentation versus klare Richtungsentscheide?

“…Operationalisierung: Effektive Anzahl der Dimensionen, basierende auf den Ergebnissen einer Hauptkomponentenanalyse. Dabei werden Parteipositionen auf ver- Datenquellen: Strøm (1990) sowie Döring und Manow (2016) für Unterhäuser, Eppner und Ganghof (2017) für Oberhäuser; ergänzt durch eigene Datensammlung.…”