Hvg krause 47K. qxd

The size of this Core is simply a function of how far apart the House

and Senate median members are. If they are relatively far apart (as with

S

2

and H

3

in 

fig. 6B), the Core is relatively large; if they are close together

(in 

fig. 6C, these two medians are identical), the Core is small.

A Party-Free Presidential System

Finally, consider a presidential system lacking disciplined parties: there is

a bicameral legislature consisting of a House and Senate, plus a presi-

dent. In this system, each of these three institutional actors has author-

ity to block efforts by the others to change policy; the status quo policy

can be upset only when a House majority plus a Senate majority plus the

president can agree on some other policy. Our goal is to determine the

set of equilibrium policies in this system. We assume there is no veto

override.

7

For example, in 

figure 7A the president is at P, and the set of equilib-

rium policies thus spans the ideal points of P and H

3

; that is, the Party-

Free Bicameral Executive Veto Core is the set of points from P to H

3

.

The reason is that an SQ to the left of P could be upset since there ex-

ists a policy at or to the right of P that the president, all senators, and all

representatives prefer to the SQ. Similarly, an SQ to the right of H

3

could be upset since there exists a policy at or to the left of H

3

that the

president, all three senators, and a majority of House members (H

1

, H

2

,

and H

3

) would prefer to the SQ. But no SQ lying in the P to H

3

region

could be upset; for example, an SQ at H

1

could not be upset by any pro-

posal to its left because all the House members (including H

1

) would

vote against it, and this SQ at H

1

could not be upset by some proposal

to its right because the president and all senators (and H

1

as well) would

vote against it.

If the president is more centrally located, we can get a different Core.

For example, with the president as shown in 

figure  7B a somewhat

smaller Core is produced. Note in 

figure 7B that the ideal point of the

president could be moved anywhere in between S

2

and H

3

(i.e., within

the bicameral core, ignoring the president) without changing the size or

location of this Core at all.

Depiction of the Party-Free Bicameral Executive Veto Core can be

simpli

fied considerably. First identify the relative locations of the ideal

points of the president, the median House member, and the median Sen-

ate member; for instance, 

figure 7A can be reduced without any loss of

Veto Points in Democratic Systems

93

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Fig. 7. A party-free presidential system

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information to what is shown in diagram C, and 

figure 7B can be re-

duced without any loss of information to what is shown in 

figures 7C

and 7D. The Core is simply the set of policies spanning the median ideal

points of the two “outside” actors. (From this perspective, we are con-

sidering the ideal point of the president to be his institution’s own “me-

dian.”) Thus, in 

figure 7C the outside actors are P and H

3

, and so the

Core spans these points; in 

figure 7D, the outside actors are S

2

and H,

and so the Core spans these two points.

The size of this Core depends on the extent of preference differences

among the “outside” pair of actors in the simpli

fied representation (as in

figs. 7C and 7D). If the outermost two actors have similar median ideal

points, the Core will be relatively small. In 

figure 7E, for example, the

president, median House member, and median Senate member have

identical ideal points, thereby producing a single-point Core; this depicts

what may be characteristic of an extreme case of “uni

fied party” govern-

ment. But if the outermost pair of actors have rather different median

ideal points, the Core will be relatively large, as in 

figures 7F and 7G;

these are two possible types of “divided party” government.

Summary

While we have presented results for just six of the many possible systems,

some important generalizations can be drawn from these systems that I

think are representative of all possible democratic systems. In the next

section, I discuss these generalizations.

Are There System-Related Differences in Core Sizes?

The core for each of our six democratic systems has now been identi

fied.

For any pair of systems, if one system always has a core that is larger than

the core of the other system, we could then conclude that a bureaucracy

in the 

first system will always have more autonomy than a bureaucracy in

the second system. We could even arrange our six systems in decreasing

order of bureaucratic autonomy (the smaller the cores the less the auton-

omy), and we could then base an empirical investigation on this expected

(i.e., hypothesized) rank ordering of systems.

However, if for any pair of systems it is not the case that one system

always has a core that is larger than the core of the other system, then we

may be unable to draw any general conclusions about which system’s bu-

reaucracy will have more autonomy. That is, it may be that, for one pair

Veto Points in Democratic Systems

95

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