The Importance of intra-party veto player for multi-level dynamics of party politics

In the paper I try to map and explain multi-level dynamics of party politics by the analysis of party cohesion. Against the theoretical background of the veto player approach I claim that multi-level dynamics result from different degrees of cohesion and the interaction between “internal” veto players inside parties as collective actors. I made an enlargement of the approach, where these internal veto players result either from the existence of factions (internal veto players on the existence level) or from the institutional framework of multi-level decision-making (internal veto players on the level of multi-level executive boards). At least the last ones can differ between political systems in number and relevance and in their factions’ control. On this internal level the different executive boards are like the institutional veto players of Tsebelis and the internal veto players on the existence level are like his partisan veto player. Keeping this in mind the assumptions of the veto player approach concerning the policy-distance and the number of veto players as well as in an extended version of the approach the importance of negotiating behaviour of the veto player can be used to explain dynamics of party politics. The paper tries to identify the main executive boards and factions in German parties to explain the party politics and dynamics in the German health care reform of 2010. In a first step the degree of cohesion will be analysed by mapping the positions of the internal veto player and in a second step by comparing the preference congruence between each of them and between them and other parties. The paper will present a draft that can be easily expended to other policy fields and other institutional arrangements to explain multi-level dynamics of party politics.