Veto Powers in Parliamentary Democracies: The Portuguese President of the Republic

Veto power has been studied along several institutional and possible legislative perspectives thus, the concept of “veto” is thus not always clear or consensual. For instance, it may imply a reasoning like the one presented in gatekeeping theories (Cox and McCubbins, 2005); notions of a negative control over the agenda that produce effects and changes in a given policy (Clinton, 2007, 459); may include contributions to pivotal theory like in Krehbiel (1998), Brady and Volden (2005); or, engage in changing a policy from veto-players perspectives (Müller and Ulrich, 2014). This latter is anchored in the foundations of veto player theory defined in the works of Tsebelis and Money (1997) and Tsebelis (2002). In this paper, I use the legal definition of a veto from an institutional actor (the president of the republic) in the Portuguese setting. The novel data used to test empirically my predictions complies a frame of 27 years and focus in all the presidential vetoes occurred during this period in Portugal. Previous work shows that veto powers of the Portuguese president of the republic have a small impact on the strategic decision-making of the government to introduce laws. The latter meaning that in a purely rational world vetoes should not occur. However, they do happen. Why is this the case? I expect that presidential policy preferences over issues and symbolic politics may play an influential role in explaining veto behavior in Portugal. In the future, I hope to enrich this research by adding other units of analysis (countries) and other “veto actors”.