Veto Players - Policy Space and Social Choice Within

Policy Space and Social Choice Within

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 proximilty of choices to their ideal on a policy spectrum. Further he assumes that there is a status quo point (apparently analogous to a disagreement point in game theoretic bargaining analysis).

He argues that the status quo will only change if it is weakly preferred by all veto players (since otherwise one of the players would veto the social choice). This is analogous to saying that the status quo will only change if the status quo is not Pareto efficient for veto players. Tsebelis then suggests that where Pareto improvements are available, the social choice will be for a point which is Pareto efficient. He suggests that in the case where there are many such points, there will be mechanisms to determine which point is reached (although there is no explicit exposition of a bargaining analysis either co-operative or non-cooperative).

Tsebslis then looks at how various veto players resolve certain situation (changing the number of policy dimensions, veto players and status quo points). In so doing he looks at situations with many solutions.