Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work.

• Author: Munger, Michael C.
• Position: Book Review

Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work By George Tsebelis Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. 320. $55.00 cloth, $18.95 paperback.

In Veto Players, George Tsebelis advances a grand thesis. Simply put, all political institutions can be modeled as a framework of vetoes. Different institutions have predictably different impacts on shaping the way preferences become policy because each institution confers a unique set of capacities to exercise vetoes.

This book's success, signaling what it takes to succeed in political science, amounts, I fear, to an indictment of that discipline. The problem the author takes up is a fairly simple and familiar one, which economists understand well: in any bargaining situation, if the consent of all participants is required, then each party has an implicit "veto." This is simply a property right of the sort that any market participant possesses: I am not obliged to sell you my property at the price you offer or to pay you the price you want for your property. Instead, I can "veto" the deal.

Political institutions define and confer property rights in all sorts of settings. The nature of the right, its alienability, and the permanence of its assignment affect its value. An option is a right separated from direct ownership of an asset: I can purchase or sell the right to undertake an action. Political vetoes, in the sense of a capacity to block an initiative or action, are options of a type that economists understand well and have modeled for decades. If, for reasons determined by the property rights of an institutional arrangement, I possess the option to block you, that right has a value. I can exchange that value "in kind" for political tribute or favors in a log roll.

When first I read Veto Players, I was mystified as to why it was necessary to concoct an entirely new lexicon and to make claims for a grand unifying vision of political institutions; after all, this framework is merely a narrow application of the broader and well-established scholarship of property rights and exchange. But then I realized that I was being naive. Having been in political science departments since 1986, I should have realized that the key to success is the blunt assertion that one has discovered a new problem. If you can get away with that claim, then you have a much easier time claiming that you have a new solution. After all, if you have discovered the problem, how could anyone else have already solved...