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Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work [1] is a book written by political science professor George Tsebelis in 2002. It is a game theory analysis of political behavior. In this work Tsebelis uses the concept of the veto player as a tool for analysing the outcomes of political systems. His primary focus is on legislative behaviour and outcomes.
The concept of the veto player is a political actor who has the ability to decline a choice being made. Specifically in Tsebelis' analysis a veto player is one who can stop a change from the status quo. This is analogous to players in a bargaining game where all players must reach agreement.
A key feature of veto players is that they have preferences over public policy outcomes and these are continuous across the continuous policy choices the veto player faces.
There are a number of difficulties with applying the concept of veto players to political systems:
Having established the concept of veto players, Tsebelis then applies this to social choice, following Anthony Downs' approach of continuous policy space with veto players concerned solely about proximity of choices to their ideal on a policy spectrum. Further he assumes that there is a status quo point (apparently analogous to a disagreement point in game theoretic bargaining analysis).
He argues that the status quo will only change if it is weakly preferred by all veto players (since otherwise one of the players would veto the social choice). This is analogous to saying that the status quo will only change if the status quo is not Pareto efficient for veto players. Tsebelis then suggests that where Pareto improvements are available, the social choice will be for a point which is Pareto efficient. He suggests that in the case where there are many such points, there will be mechanisms to determine which point is reached (although there is no explicit exposition of a bargaining analysis either co-operative or non-cooperative).
Tsebelis then looks at how various veto players resolve certain situation (changing the number of policy dimensions, veto players and status quo points). In so doing he looks at situations with many solutions.
Some literature[ citation needed ] claims that any change (in policies or institutional designs) will become more slow and difficult with increases in the number of veto players and/or the distance between them.
The power of individual veto players can be estimated with power index. [2]
Some literature criticizes parts of the veto player theory, such as the assumption that coalition partners in multiparty governments are veto players. [3] Further the prediction of veto player theory that consensus democracy is inflexible hasn't been confirmed. [3]
Rational choice theory refers to a set of guidelines that help understand economic and social behaviour. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to the political economist and philosopher Adam Smith. The theory postulates that an individual will perform a cost–benefit analysis to determine whether an option is right for them. Rational choice theory looks at three concepts: rational actors, self interest and the invisible hand.
In welfare economics, a Pareto improvement formalizes the idea of an outcome being "better in every possible way". A change is called a Pareto improvement if it leaves everyone in a society better-off. A situation is called Pareto efficient or Pareto optimal if all possible Pareto improvements have already been made; in other words, there are no longer any ways left to make one person better-off, without making some other person worse-off.
Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science." It includes the study of political behavior. In political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents and their interactions, which can be represented in a number of ways—using standard constrained utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economy.
A veto is a legal power to unilaterally stop an official action. In the most typical case, a president or monarch vetoes a bill to stop it from becoming law. In many countries, veto powers are established in the country's constitution. Veto powers are also found at other levels of government, such as in state, provincial or local government, and in international bodies.
In the social sciences, bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a good or service debate the price or nature of a transaction. If the bargaining produces agreement on terms, the transaction takes place. It is often commonplace in poorer countries, or poorer localities within any specific country. Haggling can mostly be seen within street markets worldwide, wherein there remains no guarantee of the origin and authenticity of available products. Many people attribute it as a skill, but there remains no guarantee that the price put forth by the buyer would be acknowledged by the seller, resulting in losses of profit and even turnover in some cases. A growth in the country's GDP Per Capita Income is bound to reduce both the ill-effects of bargaining and the unscrupulous practices undertaken by vendors at street markets.
Welfare economics is a field of economics that applies microeconomic techniques to evaluate the overall well-being (welfare) of a society.
A status quo bias or default bias is a cognitive bias which results from a preference for the maintenance of one's existing state of affairs. The current baseline is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss or gain. Corresponding to different alternatives, this current baseline or default option is perceived and evaluated by individuals as a positive.
The liberal paradox, also Sen paradox or Sen's paradox, is a logical paradox proposed by Amartya Sen which shows that no means of aggregating individual preferences into a single, social choice, can simultaneously fulfill the following, seemingly mild conditions:
Game theory is the branch of mathematics in which games are studied: that is, models describing human behaviour. This is a glossary of some terms of the subject.
Positive political theory (PPT), explanatory political theory, or formal theory is the study of politics using formal methods such as social choice theory, game theory, and statistical analysis. In particular, social choice theoretic methods are often used to describe and (axiomatically) analyze the performance of rules or institutions. The outcomes of the rules or institutions described are then analyzed by game theory, where the individuals/parties/nations involved in a given interaction are modeled as rational agents playing a game, guided by self-interest. Based on this assumption, the outcome of the interactions can be predicted as an equilibrium of the game.
In politics, gridlock or deadlock or political stalemate is a situation when there is difficulty passing laws that satisfy the needs of the people. A government is gridlocked when the ratio between bills passed and the agenda of the legislature decreases. Gridlock can occur when two legislative houses, or the executive branch and the legislature are controlled by different political parties, or otherwise cannot agree.
The revelation principle is a fundamental result in mechanism design, social choice theory, and game theory which shows it is always possible to design a strategy-resistant implementation of a social decision-making mechanism. It can be seen as a kind of mirror image to Gibbard's theorem. The revelation principle says that if a social choice function can be implemented with some non-honest mechanism—one where players have an incentive to lie—the same function can be implemented by an incentive-compatible (honesty-promoting) mechanism with the same equilibrium outcome (payoffs).
In philosophy, political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the state that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policymaking networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections.
Bargaining power is the relative ability of parties in an argumentative situation to exert influence over each other in order to achieve favourable terms in an agreement. This power is derived from various factors such as each party’s alternatives to the current deal, the value of what is being negotiated, and the urgency of reaching an agreement. A party's bargaining power can significantly shift the outcome of negotiations, leading to more advantageous positions for those who possess greater leverage.
Cooperative bargaining is a process in which two people decide how to share a surplus that they can jointly generate. In many cases, the surplus created by the two players can be shared in many ways, forcing the players to negotiate which division of payoffs to choose. Such surplus-sharing problems are faced by management and labor in the division of a firm's profit, by trade partners in the specification of the terms of trade, and more.
Generalized game theory is an extension of game theory incorporating social theory concepts such as norm, value, belief, role, social relationship, and institution. The theory was developed by Tom R. Burns, Anna Gomolinska, and Ewa Roszkowska but has not had great influence beyond these immediate associates. The theory seeks to address certain perceived limitations of game theory by formulating a theory of rules and rule complexes and to develop a more robust approach to socio-psychological and sociological phenomena.
Rational choice institutionalism (RCI) is a theoretical approach to the study of institutions arguing that actors use institutions to maximize their utility, and that institutions affect rational individual behavior. Rational choice institutionalism arose initially from the study of congressional behaviour in the U.S. in the late 1970s. Influential early RCI scholarship was done by political economists at California Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, and Washington University. It employs analytical tools borrowed from neo-classical economics to explain how institutions are created, the behaviour of political actors within it, and the outcome of strategic interaction.
Intra-household bargaining refers to negotiations that occur between members of a household in order to arrive at decisions regarding the household unit, like whether to spend or save or whether to study or work.
Policy network analysis is a field of research in political science focusing on the links and interdependence between government's sections and other societal actors, aiming to understand the policy-making process and public policy outcomes.
Sequential bargaining is a structured form of bargaining between two participants, in which the participants take turns in making offers. Initially, person #1 has the right to make an offer to person #2. If person #2 accepts the offer, then an agreement is reached and the process ends. If person #2 rejects the offer, then the participants switch turns, and now it is the turn of person #2 to make an offer. The people keep switching turns until either an agreement is reached, or the process ends with a disagreement due to a certain end condition. Several end conditions are common, for example:
