George Tsebelis

George Tsebelis, professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, will develop a theory of political institutions, focusing upon those individuals or groups who hold a veto over any attempt to change the status quo. According to this theory of "veto players," political institutions do not influence the direction of policy so much as the pace of legislative change. The greater the number of veto players, the greater the cohesion within them, and the greater the ideological distance between them, the harder it is to pass legislation. If legislation is hard to pass, a governing coalition is hard to sustain, and bureaucrats and judges become more active as a result of the government's paralysis. Tsebelis will write a book aimed at both policymakers and academics, offering a systematic account of the theory and a set of empirical studies of veto players in action.