Veto Players and Policy Entrepreneurship

Political institutions often use decision making procedures that create veto players—individuals or groups who, despite lacking direct decision making authority, nevertheless have the power to block policy change. In this paper we use the competitive policy development model of Hirsch and Shotts (2015) to examine how the presence of veto players effects outcomes when policies are developed endogenously. Consistent with spatial models of pivotal politics, veto players can induce gridlock, which is harmful to a centrist decisionmaker. But they can also have more subtle effects. Some of the effects are negative—for example, when the status quo is centrist, veto players dampen productive policy competition because of their resistance to change. But some of the effects are surprisingly positive. In particular, when the status quo benefits a veto player and there is a skilled policy entrepreneur who is highly motivated change it, the veto player forces the entrepreneur to develop a much higher quality proposal. This effect yields substantial benefits for a centrist decisionmaker. We also show that veto players can induce asymmetric patterns of policy development, with much greater activity by the faction that is more dissatisfied with the status quo

Competitive Policy Development

We present a model of policy development in which competing factions have different ideologies, yet agree on certain common objectives. Policy developers can appeal to a decision maker by making productive investments to improve the quality of their proposals. These investments are specific to a given proposal, which means that policy developers can potentially obtain informal agenda power. Competition undermines this agenda power, forcing policy developers to craft policies that are better for the decision maker. This beneficial effect is strongest if policy developers have divergent ideological preferences, because their intense desire to affect policy motivates them to develop higher quality proposals

Policy-Specific Information and Informal Agenda Power

In Gilligan and Krehbiel's models of procedural choice in legislatures, a committee exerts costly effort to acquire private information about an unknown state of the world. Subsequent work on expertise, delegation, and lobbying has largely followed this approach. In contrast, we develop a model of information as policy valence. We use our model to analyze a procedural choice game, focusing on the effect of transferability, i.e., the extent to which information acquired to implement one policy option can be used to implement a different policy option. We find that when information is transferable, as in Gilligan and Krehbiel's models, closed rules can induce committee specialization. However, when information is policy‐specific, open rules are actually superior for inducing specialization. The reason for this surprising result is that a committee lacking formal agenda power has a greater incentive to exercise informal agenda power by exerting costly effort to generate high‐valence legislation

A Consensus on Second Stage Analyses in Ecological Inference Models

Statistic

Veto Players and Policy Entrepreneurship

Political institutions often use decision making procedures that create veto players—individuals or groups who, despite lacking direct decision making authority, nevertheless have the power to block policy change. In this paper we use the competitive policy development model of Hirsch and Shotts (2015) to examine how the presence of veto players effects outcomes when policies are developed endogenously. Consistent with spatial models of pivotal politics, veto players can induce gridlock, which is harmful to a centrist decisionmaker. But they can also have more subtle effects. Some of the effects are negative—for example, when the status quo is centrist, veto players dampen productive policy competition because of their resistance to change. But some of the effects are surprisingly positive. In particular, when the status quo benefits a veto player and there is a skilled policy entrepreneur who is highly motivated change it, the veto player forces the entrepreneur to develop a much higher quality proposal. This effect yields substantial benefits for a centrist decisionmaker. We also show that veto players can induce asymmetric patterns of policy development, with much greater activity by the faction that is more dissatisfied with the status quo

Policy-Specific Information and Informal Agenda Power

In Gilligan and Krehbiel's models of procedural choice in legislatures, a committee exerts costly effort to acquire private information about an unknown state of the world. Subsequent work on expertise, delegation, and lobbying has largely followed this approach. In contrast, we develop a model of information as policy valence. We use our model to analyze a procedural choice game, focusing on the effect of transferability, i.e., the extent to which information acquired to implement one policy option can be used to implement a different policy option. We find that when information is transferable, as in Gilligan and Krehbiel's models, closed rules can induce committee specialization. However, when information is policy‐specific, open rules are actually superior for inducing specialization. The reason for this surprising result is that a committee lacking formal agenda power has a greater incentive to exercise informal agenda power by exerting costly effort to generate high‐valence legislation