Veto Bargaining in the Legislative Process – The Case of Chile

• In Event: Executive-Legislative Realtions, Party Politics and Presidentialism

Abstract

Presidential systems endow executives with prerogatives over the legislative process. Arguably, the most influential of those prerogatives is the veto, as it gives the president the opportunity to block policy decisions. Most of our understanding of the usage and effects of vetoes comes from in-depth analyses of the United States, and little evidence has been available beyond that case. In line with recent work analyzing the cases of Argentina and Brazil, this paper seeks to extend our understanding of the veto prerogative through the analysis of the Chilean experience. Firstly, it looks into the specificities of the type of veto available in this country in search of theoretical implications. Second, it analyzes the usage surrounding vetoes since 1990 when democracy was reestablished in the country. While vetoes are scarce everywhere, Chile stands out for making very limited use of the prerogative. Yet in line with the intuition derived from game theory, the scarcity of vetoes is not interpreted as irrelevance of the prerogative. Instead, the paper assumes that the veto is influential over the legislative process, and moves on to show the ways in which this influence plays out.

Author

• Valeria Palanza, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile