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Veto Players and the Rule of Law in Emerging Democracies

University of California, Davis

Gabriella R. Montinola

University of California, Davis

The authors investigate the relationship between constitutional design and the rule of law in emerging democracies. The authors provide a formal logic to the Madisonian assertion that increasing the number of veto players strengthens the rule of law. The model shows that as the number of veto players in government increases, their ability to collude on accepting bribes decreases; therefore, their incentive to vote on legislation strengthening the rule of law increases. The authors classify governments according to the number of veto players, following the logic proposed by Tsebelis. The authors test hypotheses derived from their model on 35 emerging democracies using veto-player data that they gathered for the analyses. The authors find that systems with multiple veto players have higher levels of the rule of law. Furthermore, independent of the number of veto players, presidential systems have lower levels of the rule of law than do parliamentary systems.

Key Words: Madison • veto players • rule of law

Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, 55-87 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0010414003260125


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