The Scope for Policy Change after the 2005 Election: Veto Players and Intra-Party Decision Making

Abstract

This article investigates the potential for decisive policy change after the 2005 German election. Using party manifestos, the analysis concentrates on the size of the winset of the Grand Coalition in legislation with and without mandatory Bundesrat consent. One of its innovative aspects is the systematic distinction between political parties as unitary actors on the one hand and as collective actors (with varying levels of cohesion) on the other. If parties are treated as unitary actors, the conventional view suggests that the Grand Coalition is likely to have only a moderate potential for policy change in both types of legislation. Relaxing the unitary actor-assumption reveals a different strategic situation: the less cohesive the government parties, the larger the potential for policy change. At the same time, however, the self-imposed time-limit of the Grand Coalition promotes defection, because the parties' behaviour is less likely to be disciplined by the existence of a ‘shadow of the future’. Under these conditions, policy change also seems to depend on the distribution of gains between the coalition partners.