Stepan and Linz identified twenty-three long-standing democracies with advanced economies. Then they counted the number of veto players in each of those twenty-three governments. (A veto player is a person or body that can block a policy decision. Stepan and Linz explain, “For example, in the United States, the Senate and the House of Representatives are veto players because without their consent, no bill can become a law.”)"Verrrry interrrrestink, but not fonnny." to quote Arte Johnson from long ago Laugh-In. As a social scientist, I view an n of 23 as entirely too small a sample from which to generalize.
More than half of the twenty-three countries Stepan and Linz studied have only one veto player; most of these countries have unicameral parliaments. A few countries have two veto players; Switzerland and Australia have three. Only the United States has four.
Then they made a chart, comparing Gini indices with veto-player numbers: the more veto players in a government, the greater the nation’s economic inequality. This is only a correlation, of course, and cross-country economic comparisons are fraught, but it’s interesting.
Wouldn't you have thought Lepore would identify who our four veto players are, instead of naming only two? I assume she would call POTUS a third but who is the fourth, the Fed? The Supremes? The Speaker?
