Veto Players

In this work Tsebelis uses the concept of the veto player as a tool for analysing the outcomes of political systems.

The concept of the veto player is a political actor who has the ability to decline a choice being made.

There are a number of difficulties with applying the concept of veto players to political systems:Condorcet methods Positional voting Cardinal voting Quota-remainder methods Approval-based committees Fractional social choice Semi-proportional representation By ballot type Pathological response Strategic voting Paradoxes of majority rule Positive results Having established the concept of veto players, Tsebelis then applies this to social choice, following Anthony Downs' approach of continuous policy space with veto players concerned solely about proximity of choices to their ideal on a policy spectrum.

Some literature[citation needed] claims that any change (in policies or institutional designs) will become more slow and difficult with increases in the number of veto players and/or the distance between them.

[3] Further the prediction of veto player theory that consensus democracy is inflexible hasn't been confirmed.