Vetospieler und die Durchsetzbarkeit von Side‐Payments

Once an agreement is signed at the international level, it can no longer be modified during the domestic decision‐making process. However, it is possible to compensate potential veto players by a purely domestic legislative act. Under which circumstances do such side‐payments make sense, and what is the role played by political strategies? In order to be compensated, an actor needs to be considered a veto player. Furthermore, the defenders of the international agreement must have a sufficiently large interest in its ratification to be willing to offer compensations. These basic conditions fulfilled, the existence or not of side‐payments depends on the strategic interactions between the political actors. In the last ten years, Swiss citizens had to vote twice on an international agreement establishing free movement of persons. In both cases, the unions asked for flanking measures; while they failed in their attempt in the context of the European Economic Area, they succeeded in the case of the bilateral agreements. This difference in outcome is all the more surprising since in both cases the unions were in a veto player position and the export oriented economy had a strong interest in the ratification of the agreements. This article explains the different fate of the unions' claims by stressing the role of changes in actor strategies. The credibility of the threat to block the decision‐making process and the succession of the game sequences are in this perspective of paramount importance. By using strategically the veto threat, domestic groups such as unions are able to benefit from internationalisation.     

The Politics of Retrenchment: The Quandaries of Social Protection Under Military Rule in Chile, 1973–1990

Chile's military government replaced the country's universalistic social policy system with a set of market-oriented social policies. Taking evidence from three areas (pensions, education, and health care), this study seeks to explain why the military advanced a policy of deep retrenchment and why reform of health care was less thorough than it was in pensions and education. The radical transformation of policy relates to the breadth of power concentration enjoyed by General Pinochet and his economic team, the policymakers' ideological positions, and the role of veto players. The more limited reform of health care is linked to the actions of a powerful veto player, the professional association of physicians.     

The Formal Independence of Regulators: A Comparison of 17 Countries and 7 Sectors

This article seeks to explain the pattern of delegation to independent regulatory agencies in Western Europe. Two types of arguments are advanced to explain variations in the formal independence of regulators. Firstly, the need for governments to increase their credible commitment capacity may lead them to delegate regulation to an agency that is partly beyond their direct control. Secondly, delegation may be a response to the political uncertainty problem, which arises when governments are afraid of being replaced by another coalition with different preferences, which could decide to change existing policy choices. In addition, veto players may constitute a functional equivalent of delegation, since they influence policy stability and therefore tend to mitigate both the credibility and the political uncertainty problems. These arguments are consistent with the results of the empirical analysis of the formal independence of regulators in seventeen countries and seven sectors.     

Contested Institutionalisation: Women's Policy Agencies and Challenges to Gender Equality in Germany

Germany has created one of the world's largest women's policy infrastructures. But the scope as well as the effect of institutionalising women's policy agencies is contested. Even committed proponents of gender equality note the agencies’ limited influence in important policy arenas. Critics of institutionalisation have used the fiscal crisis of the past decade to push efforts to downsize or diversify the mission of women's policy agencies. Building on theories of new institutionalism, this article attributes recent challenges to the institutionalisation of gender politics in Germany to three sets of factors: First, to tensions between strong formal gender equality rules and weak informal equality norms; second, to powerful internal and external veto players who use their leverage to prevent gender equality legislation; and, third, to a shifting policy discourse that has reframed gender equality language in gender mainstreaming terms and might lead to significant changes in the institutional gender equality architecture.     

Budgetary Politics and Veto Players

In this article we examine whether and how the policy‐oriented coalition building and the gridlock model of legislative choice explain changes in the allocation of German budgetary items between 1961 and 1994. The policy‐oriented coalition‐building approach suggests that only policy‐connected budgetary actors can make changes in the budgetary composition, while the location of the status quo is essential for budgetary modifications according to the gridlock model. We also draw the attention to the identification of the set of relevant budgetary veto players and their preferences by distinguishing between models of the government, the political parties of the Bundestag, and the two of them. We test the predictive power of these approaches and conceptions in a competitive manner and control for macroeconomic and other political factors that might influence changes in the budgetary allocation. Our findings show that the gridlock model better explains budgetary changes, and that the government is responsible for decreasing, but the political parties of the Bundestag majority are decisive for increasing the size of budgetary items. We conclude that identifying the relevant veto players and using these more sophisticated approaches on budgetary decision making provide significant insights into the political reasons for changing the allocation of the German budget.     

Explaining Policy Stability and Change in Swiss Health Care Reforms

The article investigates recent health reforms and reform attempts in Switzerland. A substantial reform, the revision of the health insurance law in 1994, is followed by a long period of refused reform proposals and incremental change. In order to explain policy change and policy stability in health policies, we apply veto‐player theory to partisan and parliamentary debates on reform proposals of the health insurance from the end of the 1980s until today. Shifts in ideological positions of parties, especially with regard to the objective of solidarity, allowed for a new win‐set in the 1990s that was at the base of the law revision. Since then, the win‐set is empty as parties did not change their preferences. New and substantial reforms will only be possible, it is concluded, if the pivot player, the Christian‐democratic party, changes its ideological positions to a significant extent.     

Presidential activism and government termination in dual-executive Ukraine

The limits on presidential authority in premier-presidential regimes permit legislatures to wield preeminent influence over government formation and termination. This article shows that even without formal powers to dismiss the prime minister, the president may play a decisive role in government replacement. The article compares three successful and one failed attempt by the president to unseat the prime minister in Ukraine under a premier-presidential system. Based on a review of the significance of 10 variables accounting for presidential activism, it finds that the president’s informal control over institutional veto players as well as the unity of his party faction and cooperation of opposition groups were necessary for the success of attempted cabinet turnover.     

La nueva dinámica política de América Latina: temas para una agenda de investigación

Social transformations in Latin American have generated new phenomena which dominant political discourse, but also some studies of the political dynamics, are unable to express and even seek to conceal. To illustrate these developments the article analyses: 1) the emergence of new veto powers on the democratic system, quite different from the traditional one; 2) the celebration of the rise of “new middle classes”, a statistical conglomerate that refers to important social transformations but does not constitute a social category nor has a clear political expression; 3) the current debate on the regulation of the media, in which we argue that it expresses relevant socio-technological and political changes but is being held in a way that conceals undemocratic interests, both from governments and companies; 4) political parties and their difficulty to represent emerging social groups and generational differences; 5) civil society, which became fragmented and tanned by local political culture and should not be treated as an homogeneous and virtuous universe. We conclude that the consolidation of democracy requires from researchers and political actors to overcome the analytical and ideological paradigms that were, and still are, dominant in the region.     

The Politics of Welfare State Reform

This article presents and discusses the state of the art in political science research on welfare state reform. While scholars first aimed at explaining the emergence and growth of the welfare state, national variation in its development, and crises of welfare state regimes, more recently the focus has shifted to the persistence and reform of the major welfare state institutions. Research in this direction has typically adopted an institutionalist perspective, stressing how institutional settings affect the feasibility and direction of reforms. These studies have shed light on important aspects of the question, in particular by demonstrating the role of path dependency and veto players in reform processes, but suffer from two main problems, namely the difficulty of defining the dependent variable in an appropriate way, and the neglect of the importance of power resources.     

Minority Presidents and Democratic Performance in Latin America

A widely accepted argument among scholars of Latin American presidential regimes is that interbranch cooperation is impaired when the president's party falls short of a majority of seats in the legislature. This argument fails to consider three factors that affect the performance of minority presidents: the policy position of the president's party, the president's capacity to sustain a veto, and the legislative status of the parties included in the cabinet. This article argues that the greatest potential for conflict in a presidential regime occurs when the president's party lacks the support of both the median and the veto legislator and no cabinet coalition holding a majority of legislative seats is formed. This hypothesis is supported using data on executive-legislative conflicts and on interrupted presidencies in Latin America during the period 1978–2003.     

The Ambiguity of Veto Power in Coalitions: German Liberals' Role as a Watchdog in Justice and Home Affairs and their Failure to Sell Stalemate as Success in the Federal Elections of 2013

The article demonstrates that the rigid use of veto capacity in coalitions causes risks for re-election. Justice was a high-salience domain of the German Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), which occupied this portfolio in its coalition with the Conservative majority in the federal legislative period from 2009 to 2013. By analysing several legislative projects the article shows that their contents or non-adoption were an effect of liberals' vetoes. This policy-seeking strategy provoked conflicts within the coalition and stalemate making it impossible to realise popular measures that would have enhanced the Liberals' reputation and the importance of the domain for the voters who were mainly interested in economic and social policy. Moreover, the Liberals' vetoes led to a loss of support from its major coalition partner in the pre-election campaign. Thus governmental parties have to trade off policy and vote-seeking goals in order to get re-elected.     

Analytic authoritarianism and Nigeria

Despite two decades of democratisation and some recent liberalisation in North Africa, dictatorships linger around the world. New research on comparative authoritarianism questions personal rule and studies a range of dependent variables, such as why dictators sometimes provide public goods. This ‘analytic authoritarian’ literature emphasises collective governance and explores the institutional basis of policy control. Nigeria's military regimes between 1966 and 1998 provide examples of how military factions and subnational actors can impose transaction costs on authoritarian policy processes. These alternative centres of policy control limited the ability of dictators to unilaterally advance their policy preferences on questions relating to federalism and transition plans. The article concludes by linking this analysis to Nigeria's lingering legacies of authoritarianism and the institutional basis of its 1999 transition.     

The politics of U.S. most-favored-nation treatment to China: The cases of 1979 and 1990

This article seeks to analyze U.S. interests in granting China the most-favored-nation status in 1979 and the present situation regarding the extension of such status. It argues that while the change and continuity in U.S.-China policy interests and objectives may still guide U.S. decision makers, what happened in Beijing last spring has given rise to a formidable congressional coalition among liberals, conservatives, and protectionists in opposing MFN treatment to China. The final outcome will depend largely on the degree of presidential readiness to defend his China policy and on whether the president is able to prevent the congressional overriding of the presidential veto.     

Declining might in the limelight: European responses to new regional powers

The article analyses the responses of three established European powers, France, Britain and Germany, to a world of rising regional hegemons. It argues that Europe as a region remains unique as it consists of three regional powers of similar material and ideational power resources and is the most institutionalised region worldwide. The current transformation of world power configurations, debated in competing visions of global order, challenges Europe's central place. Facing gradual marginalisation, the foreign policy adaptations of Germany, Britain and France have been insufficient and remarkably static. Old foreign policy identities still play a significant part in European self-perceptions. However, views are gradually changing as the world becomes more heterogeneous. Among the emerging regional powers, China, India and Russia are perceived as decisive global players. Other rising powers are viewed as mainly regional and, hence, more manageable actors. Finally, the article calls for a general shift in European attitudes towards the non-European world and argues that European powers should overcome traditional Euro-centric world views. Rather, they should start to engage with rising powers in a serious discourse over common global responsibilities.     

Domestic Contestation and Presidential Prerogative in Colombian Foreign Policy

The study of Colombian foreign policy emphasises external constraints and presidential prerogative in foreign policymaking. Drawing on insights from recent foreign policy analysis literature and evidence from several cases (Plan Colombia, US military bases, free trade talks with China, and ICJ arbitration of a maritime border with Nicaragua), this article challenges commonplace presidentialist assumptions. A novel model of ‘contested presidentialism’ better captures how Colombian domestic actors mobilise to raise political costs to block or modify presidential preferences. When the opposition fails to raise costs, presidentialist assumptions apply. Otherwise, presidents respond strategically by abandoning policies or substituting second-best alternatives.     

Berlin's Republic: Parliamentary government in a German land

Berlin is the only German Land that has had to manage its own reunification and originally many hoped that it would turn into a model for east–west reconciliation. Yet 15 years later there is widespread consensus that Berlin failed to live up to the challenges of the time and adequately deal with the consequences of reunification. Instead of embarking on structural reforms Berlin produced its own version of a Reformstau. The article describes and examines some basic features of the party system in Berlin and the Berlin polity. It will thus give an answer to the question as to how unification affected the institutional setting in this Land. Overall it will be shown that the Reformstau in Berlin cannot be explained by a fragmented political system or powerful veto players. Political stagnation in Berlin rather was due to the combined effects of party system change, institutional stagnation, and constitutionally inhibited political leadership.     

Lawmaking and Decree Making in the Russian Federation: Time,Space, and Rules in Russian National Policymaking

Russia's 1993 constitution created a hybrid presidential-parliamentary system in which the president has the power to initiate and veto legislation and to issue normative decrees. Using a comprehensive examination of laws and decrees promulgated in 1994-2004, three political scientists identify key influences on the use of lawmaking and decree-making powers by the president and parliament: constitutional constraints on the use of decree-making power, temporal considerations, and the effect of change in the policy distance between the president and the Duma. The interplay of these forces is illustrated in a case study of the use of law and decree in setting policy on land ownership.     

Seeking Domestic Approval: Determinants of Ratification Duration in International Trade

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have proliferated rapidly since the early 1990s. The ratification of these agreements matters both economically by rendering commitments legally enforceable for outward‐oriented industries and politically by revealing the domestic‐ and international‐level factors which delay or accelerate the entry into force of a PTA. This research note investigates the institutional design and domestic political determinants of the ratification duration for 270 PTAs concluded in the post‐1990 period. The Weibull survival analysis yields two main results: First, neither domestic political constraints measured through veto players nor PTA depth affect ratification spells. Second, ratification processes become more protracted in the presence of stringent formal domestic ratification requirements as well as with a higher number of partner states. These findings suggest that trade negotiators factor in the shadow of ratification in the bargaining phase but still remain subject to formal ratification hurdles and PTA membership dynamics.     

美国对华战略规锁下的贸易冲突博弈路径选择

特朗普执政后,美国对华战略逐步由“接触”转向“规锁”,中美经贸关系也因此发展到了摩擦频现甚至是冲突对抗的新阶段。美国对华战略规锁本质上是要遏制中国在科技进步和国家实力等方面的崛起,以维护其霸权地位。贸易冲突作为美国对华战略规锁最直接的手段之一,在一定程度上反映了其国内利益集团与党派之间的斗争。特朗普政府为了获得国内政治支持,推出了严重扭曲的对华贸易政策。文章从美国对华战略规锁的视角,运用多重博弈论方法对中美贸易冲突进行了路径选择分析并认为,囚徒困境中“以牙还牙”策略下的博弈双方均实施损人损己的策略,无论采取“以牙还牙”、冷酷触发还是无限拖延,博弈双方的最优策略都是通过贸易谈判实现继续合作;双方只有通过有效谈判,逐步取消加征的贸易壁垒,才能达成协议并获得最大收益。基于博弈结果的情景分析与中美第一阶段经贸协议内容,文章为破解中美贸易冲突困境以及未来防范提供了战略参考和政策启示。