Policy change becomes harder as the number of actors whose consent is required grows.
Tsebelis's 2002 framework. It explains why coalition governments and separated-powers systems produce policy stability regardless of who holds office, and why crises produce demands for fewer veto points.
In practice
- A coalition of four parties passes almost nothing in its second year, and each party can point to a manifesto commitment it kept.
- A company requiring sign-off from legal, security and finance changes its terms rarely, and each function is behaving correctly.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works