How do institutional legislative points change over time and what
effect does this have for policy making? In answering this question
the paper conceptualizes institutional patterns as parts of a
behavioural-institutional equilibrium. In this view institutions might
change because actors do not only adapt their behavior to institutions
but also attempt to change them in order to reduce their constraining
effects. Legislative veto points exert particular constraining
effects. They raise the legislative threshold and thereby the policy
and office costs for parliamentary parties in building legislative and
governmental coalitions. Hence, they should be a permanent aim of
actors’ rule-changing attempts. In testing this claim I build on a new
multidimensional veto point index that advances existing research in
two regards: First, the index accounts for the three dimensions of
formal strength, congruence and legitimacy separately. Thus it
provides a detailed and conceptually clear characterization of various
veto points and their potential to restrain majority rule. Second, the
index allows discovering slighter institutional shifts over time.
Using a fuzzy set analysis I show that there is a general trend
towards the abolition of legislative veto points and a convergence of
parliamentary democracies on majority rule.
