Institutional change of legislative veto points in parliamentary democracies

Legislative veto points, such as veto rights of parliamentary minorities, of second chambers, presidential vetoes, referendums etc., are institutions thoroughly studied in comparative politics. They are usually ascribed a constraining effect on the parliamentary majority with consequences regarding policies, the size, composition and stability of governmental and legislative coalitions, and even regarding the stability of political systems. Despite these manifold effects of veto institutions, surprisingly, consequences of these effects for the stability or vulnerability of these institutions themselves so far have been largely neglected – theoretically as well as empirically. This is where this paper aims to make a contribution. I expect combinations of institutional properties of veto points to determine incentives for, as well as costs of, institutional reforms. Building on insights of studies of electoral system change as well as literature explaining the usage of minority rights or self-restraint in the legislative process, the paper develops an equilibrium explanation for institutional change and stability of legislative veto points. The explanation stresses the importance of two aspects: first, the interdependence of actors’ behavioural incentives in the legislative process and in the institutional reform process; second, the importance of the veto points’ institutional legitimacy for the incentives to use and/or reform veto points as this legitimacy determines which behaviour of the political elite will be rewarded or punished by the electorate. Thus the theory allows to integrate the normative concept of institutional legitimacy into a rational-choice based explanation. One key aspect of the explanation developed is the concept of institutional legitimacy of veto points which takes into account the procedural effect of those institutions within the legislative process. As contra-majoritarian institutions, veto points violate the political equality of parliamentarians and thus usually of voters; thus they need special justification to be considered legitimate. Such a justification is assumed to be given when a veto point rather serves an additional democratic purpose than violates majority rule. Empirically, the paper assesses the importance of institutional characteristics with regard to change or stability of legislative veto points in 38 established parliamentary democracies. An index is developed in order to measure and compare the constraining effect (the strength) of different (types of) veto points and to measure changes thereof over time. A qualitative comparative analysis shows that, in the long run and for strong legislative veto points, the presence or absence of institutional legitimacy appears to (quasi) sufficient to explain institutional stability and change respectively. Thus, the explanation, focusing on institutional factors and reform incentives inherent in these, is able to explain stability or (the direction of) change in the long run and for those cases where institutional effects and their incentives are strong. This also gives important insights with regard to advantages as well as limitations of equilibrium explanations of institutional change more generally.