Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)

With one party controlling the presidency and the opposing party controlling Congress, the veto has inevitably become a critical tool of presidential power. Combining sophisticated game theory with unprecedented data, this book analyzes how divided party presidents use threats and vetoes to wrest policy concessions from a hostile Congress. Case studies of the most important vetoes in recent history add texture to the analysis, detailing how President Clinton altered the course of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution. Offering the first book-length analysis to bring rational choice theory to bear on the presidency, Veto Bargaining is a major contribution to our understanding of American politics in an age of divided party government. "This book analyzes the politics of the presidential veto. Combining sophisticated game theory with unprecedented data, it shows how presidents use vetoes and threats of vetoes to wrest policy concessions from a hostile Congress. Case studies of the most important vetoes in recent history add texture to the analysis. The first book-length attempt to bring rational choice theory to bear on the presidency, Veto Bargaining is a major contribution to our understanding of American politics in an age of divided party government."--BOOK JACKET. American political scientists have rediscovered what the foremost historian of the Founding Era calls "the major justification for all the constitutional reforms the Republicans proposed" in 1789, the principle "expanded and exalted by the Americans to the foremost position in their constitutionalism," in fact "the dominant principle of the American political system" (Wood 1969:449, 604).