Veto Bargaining
Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power

Combining game theory with unprecedented data, this book analyzes how divided party Presidents use threats and vetoes to wrest policy concessions from a hostile congress.

Charles M. Cameron (Author)

9780521625500, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 19 June 2000

312 pages, 47 b/w illus. 26 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'Veto Bargaining is the best book on the presidency since Neustadt's Presidential Power. Cameron's systematic theoretical and empirical approach represents nothing less than a new way to study the presidency.' Barry Weingast, Stanford University

The late-twentieth century has given rise to the most concentrated period of divided party government in American history. 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 offers a major contribution to our understanding of American politics in an age of divided party government.

1. Divided government and interbranch bargaining
2. A natural history of veto bargaining, 1945–1992
3. Rational choice and the presidency
4. Models of veto bargaining
5. Explaining the patterns
6. Testing the models
7. Veto threats
8. Interpreting history
9. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Political structure & processes [JPH]