Legislative Veto Players, Cabinet Formation and Endogenous Institutions

Are cabinets more likely to form when they “control” institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority veto rights? Existing research on this question has been inconclusive. On the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 advanced democracies between 1955 and 2012, we argue that veto institutions have the expected effect, everything else being equal, but that its size differs systematically across political systems. It is estimated to be much larger, and only significant, in those systems that abolished the relevant institutional veto player during the period under consideration. We interpret this as indirect evidence for the partial endogeneity of veto institutions: the more these institutions actually constrain behavioral patterns in legislation and cabinet formation, the greater is the likelihood that they will be reformed or abolished.