Veto players and political decision making

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1304451 (Table of Contents)

This dissertation studies political decision making through a veto players approach which entails identifying those political actors with the power to veto the decision, and understanding the political outcome as a product of the interaction of these actors. The veto players literature so far takes veto players as simple, domestic actors with given preferences that are common knowledge to everyone. This approach leaves out any strategic interaction that may take place among veto players as it treats them as commonly known preference profiles, and thus creates serious gaps in the literature. This dissertation aims to fill these gaps in the literature by treating veto players, and those third parties that the veto players are accountable to as strategic actors in the game of politics which may take place in limited-information settings. The second important factor that the literature has not explored yet is the emergence of new veto players. This dissertation acknowledges that in certain policy areas the set of relevant veto players may include foreign actors as well as domestic ones, and analyzes how the emergence and the existence of these new players influence political decision making and the resulting policies. Finally, the fact that veto players in a political system are either elected or appointed, and thus are usually accountable to those who effect or appoint them, is the third factor that the veto players literature has yet to take into account. This dissertation includes those third parties as strategic players in the game of political decision making, and thus contributes towards filling out this gap in the literature. The chapters investigate general questions on institutions and political decision making while drawing upon specific examples from Turkish politics using formal analysis, and game theoretical and statistical tools.