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0:06
Good morning to you all. I would like to greet Professor Alexandro Misale, head of the department of economics, management and quantitative methods. Franchesco Zukini, full professor of political science here at the University of Milan. And of course, our guest of honor, George Selis, an expert in comparative politics and formal modeling, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, but also, as I like to point out,
0:43
a native of what is undoubtedly the credle of Western civilization and democracy. Thank you for being here, Professor Telis, and welcome to the University of Milan. For us, having the privilege to confer an honorary degree in economics and political science to Professor Telis is not only a way to celebrate his outstanding academic achievements in this field, but also has a distinct cultural value, one that goes beyond the academic sphere. Indeed, the study of political
1:23
and social mechanism and global balances takes on a special significance in today's world. A world where we are forced to defend the founding values of democracy and the rule of law. We thought that these values were unshakable. And yet they seem to falter even in Europe under the pressure of populist and nationalist forces. In these hard times where European universities are called upon
1:56
to safeguard western democratic values and peace in general, we turn with special interest to the field of political, social and international studies. As we face the tragedy of war, the resurgence of violence and oppression of the weak, and the latest attacks of universities and knowledge, let's teach our students that studying come reasoning and scientific research are the only tools to truly understand the complexity of reality and to overcome extremism and hate.
2:36
Given this backdrop, freedom of teaching and freedom of research are crucial to safeguard and maintain peace. Over his whole career as a scholar and researcher in the fields of political science, economics and constitutional law, Professor Tabelis devoted himself to the thorough investigation and interdisciplinary analysis of the mechanis mechanism governing social and political orders. combining his endless dedication with strong scientific
3:08
rigor. His works are classics in the field of political science and will always be able to speak to the present to disclose new perspectives and to leave simulating questions open for future researchers. My most heartfelt congratulations, Professor Tabellis. Thank you.
3:39
Graciiche. Thank you, director. Um, good morning to everyone. Bonjouro. Um, as head of the department of economics, um, management and quantitative methods. I have the honor and the pleasure to introduce the conferral of the honorary degree to professors seelis. Uh today's honorary degree is in economics and political science. This joint degree is rare if not unique in the Italian university system but still it is a master degree. So why confer a master degree on
4:24
George Seelis who already holds two PhD uh one uh in political science and one in um mathematical statistics uh as well as a degree in engineering and why in economics together with political science. What is the connection between political science and economics? So, economics studies the relation between economic actors uh how they interact and make decision. Um this interaction uh however take place within institutions uh which sets the rules of the game um which set
5:16
the playfield. But institutions how do they change or do not change depends on the political system and on veto players as George Seelis has taught us. Um this is why George seed contributions of the theory of the functioning of a political system and institutional change is so dramatically important for economics. So the motivation for economic for an economic degree does not rest only in the methodological tools that we share rational cho rational choice and game theory
6:00
but in the beautiful theory of institutional and policy change um that George has given as a gift to economics. Um so let me conclude by saying that when our student graduate in APS um have to choose between uh uh adding their diploma in uh economics or in political science. So at the end of the lecture we will have to ask George whether he wants his degree in economics or political science and I very much like that he choose economics. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Okay.
6:58
It is with a great pleasure and also with a bit of apprecion that I'm going to illustrate the contribution of professor George Seelis to political science and to social sciences more broadly. The pleasure and apprehension do not come from his extraordinary scientific standing which today University of Milan celebrates with the honor honorary degree in economics and political science. They also come from the fact that George is a dear friend of mine. Will
7:32
I be up to the task? George Biley's academic and scientific career is truly remarkable. It grew inside political science but touched also on economics and constitutional law. This career has always been fed by three key elements. First, a strong logical and conceptual rigor. Second, the ability to spot the real details that matter when explaining events. Third, great passion, a handless curiosity for politics. This passion led a young and brilliant Greek engineer in
8:12
the middle 1970s to earn wholesome degree in political studies in Paris. At the same times, the need for clarity, simplicity, a even beauty typical of math pushed later the same student towards a doctorate in mathematical statistics on Greek electrogeography at that time in Europe, an acceptable compromise between a mathematical formalization toward which would always remain attached, empirical research in social sciences and passion for politics. ics in Paris at
8:50
discovery also the great European scholars of comparative politics of the h Stori Dier Leipart whom he knew would never stop engaging with critically he's also read the European press every day especially the Italian press looking for political dynamics and complex events Italian politics at at the time offered plaintely of such material. But Sabil's attention to political events was never just descriptive. It always aims to build and maintain a solid and lasting
9:30
theory. The foundation of that theory, however, would not be laid in France. Like all giants, Tibelis too had to climb on the shoulders of other giants. He found those shoulders in the United States. First at Washington University in St. Louis where he moved in the early 1980s to complete his second PhD this time in political science. then at Stafford Duke University and finally in UCLA where he taught for 20 years until 2007 rapidly ascending the academic ladder in the
10:14
US. He entered a very fertile intellectual environment. Washington University in St. Lewis had become the home of some of the first students of William Riker, the founder of rational choice in political science. Thereis met colleagues who shared his need for clarity and rigor and who tried to explain political decisions with the tools of the game theory. But there was an important difference. Why colleagues such as Shepsley and Vangast far
10:48
from being isolated applied the approach to U. US system. Sibelis was almost a lone pioneer in applying it to comparative politics a field that until then had ignored or even rejected rational choice theory. His efforts to produce several articles and then his first major book nested games rational choice in comparative politics 1998 before briefly summarizing its content I want to recall two articles from that period which did not did not flow into the book but had great
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impact even outside the political science they are the abuse of probability in political science analysis, the Robinson Cruz fallacy and penalty has no impact on the crime. Again theoretic analysis. Let me say also that the first one was also my first seis reading. In these works, Seis challenged the traditional economic analysis of crime. He introduced a game theoretic approach that considered not only the payoff of criminals but also the interaction with
12:06
the police and the payoff of the police. In the equilibrium of a simple two by two game, what matters is not the severity of the penalty but the probability that it will be applied by the police. This claim is still very relevant today, especially in current Italian legal context. The listeners here will not miss this point. It is also easy to see how these conclusions could extend to many other areas where policemen and law breaker take on different identities but keep the
12:47
same relationships as for instance international sanction and industry industry regulation it's not as I said nested games laid the foundation for later work. The opening chapter contains one of the most convincing, smart, and complete defenses ever written of the rational approach to the study of politics and not only politics. In the following chapters, Tibetis clearly defines his object of interest. Political institutions understood as games in extensive form.
13:30
Political institutions have the rules that govern interaction among political actors. They are games chosen to solve cooperation and coordination problems. These games can include among the moves available to actors the choice to change the rules themselves, the choice to change the game. With this toolbox, Sebelis examines some puzzles from European politics at the time. These were surprising cases that seemed to contradict the idea that political actors are rational. It
14:09
shows that these political actors are not inconsistent or easy victims of emotions. Instead, they are skilled players involved in m multiple games at the same time with different strategies. For example, a political actor can use a cooperative strategy in a legislative game and a tough strategy in an electoral game. The analysis explains when one strategy wins over another.
14:40
This was a create creative use of game theory in comparative politics but it was not yet true crossnational comparison. Telis looked closely at the individual cases reconstructing the game in which actors were involved. These models could inspire studies in other countries, but they were not yet a general explanation of a phenomenon across countries. Not yet. Starting from 1992, a long journey of theoretical thinking and research begins. It starts with studying two
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chamber systems go through studying the European legitity process and culminates in the general study of policy change in democracies. Bicalism 1997 written with Janet Monet is a bridge book. It analyzes about 50 countries. It shows that bicamealism is not one thing but many. Behind a single word by cameraism, there are multiple games. No bicame system is identical to another. And the authors reported this variety with great accuracy. But one lesson is clear. The interaction
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between the two chambers is key to understanding what happened inside each of them. To handle this variety while keeping a unified theoretical framework, Sibelius and money uses two-step strategy. First, with cooperative game theory and social choice, they define the political space where knowledge is that the status quo could be changed with a concept of both chambers. This is the core, the set of possible equilibria outcomes. Second, with non-ooperative game theory,
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it showed how institutional details like the type of procedure used to solve the conflicts between the chambers or the length of their terms decide which chamber prevails. In other words, where in the political space the final outcome will be located. The models are then tested with statistics and illustrated with detailed examples. This work, as I mentioned, is a bridge towards Tibel's most ambitious research program. The key question of this program
17:16
is simple. Why are some political systems more open to the policy change while others resist it? This is the research question behind Telis's most cited articles and his masterpiece most famous book VTO players how political institutions work 2002. The first step of the analytical strategy using used in bicamealism is the same as the one employed to address this re research question. If one if one does not claim to know exactly where the new status quo will be located when change
17:59
occurs, the answer once again lies in the core. What matters is the size of the policy area that cannot be altered due to the opposition of the at least one political or institutional actor with veto power. In bicamealism, the veto players are the two chambers. More generally, however, the veto players can be a variety of different basic idea as stability and self analogies was not entirely new. US scholars Oman and Miller had had tried to apply it to the United States
18:37
political constitutional system. Zilis gave it solid theoretical foundations and standed it to hold democracy and by doing it he he makes a revolution in comparative analysis of political institutions. In the book VTO players and a much cited awardwinning article that comes before it sees analyzes different political systems in a new way. It does not base its analysis on the political regime presidential or parliamentary. It does not look at the party system two party
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or multi-party. It does not consider the strength of the internal unity of parties strong and weak. It does not focus on the number of chambers, one chamber, two chambers. Instead, he looks at the actors whose agreement is necessary to for changing the status quo. VTO players. These actors are so to speak created by constitutions and political dynamics. What matters in the is the number of veto players and how far apart they are ideologically.
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Many vital players far apart ideologically mean little policy change. Many vital players far apart sorry legislation in such system is incremental. Bureaucrats and judges become more powerful because they act without fear of being overridden by new laws.
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Many FTO players far apart ideologically limit also the importance of agenda setting power. Succeeding in promoting and protecting one's proposal or not succeeding does not significantly differentiate the outcome of the decision-making process. Where agenda setting power given to the governments by constitutional rules is weak, governments tend to position themsel at the center of the political space as a partial compensation of their institutional weakness. This positioning
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however limits government alternation and in turn increases policy stability. Italian first republic seel's analysis supported by advanced statistical test remind us how important institutional arrangements are but it also shows the importance of political preferences even when institutional arrangements tended to reduce the number of it players and concentrate agenda setting power extreme Differences in political positions of vital player, the so-called polarization
21:41
can still lead to deadlock and government instability as we have recently seen in France. personally with some dismay. The importance of vital players also goes beyond the disciplinary boundaries which have always been possible science and economics. Fundamental aspects of economic policy and perhaps even the balance between fiscal and monetary policy can be investigated using the same analytical framework. Budget structure and public depth are at least partly a function of
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decision made within the political system. Many vital players with large ideological distances among them tend to perpetuate past decisions to preserve the same level of debt and the same distribution of public spending across budget items. On the other hand, many vital players in disagreement with each other can also make central banks more credible because their independence is safer from legislative interference. The vital players framework produced many empirical studies
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in political science and political economy. At the same time, stability itself use it to study the European Union. The European Union does not fit easily into a traditional classification. So, veto players theory is a natural tool for it. But remember, nested games. Institutions are games where one possible move is to change the game itself. In democracies, the legitity game includes the move of changing the constitution. Veto players explained when important
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legitity changes are possible. But what about constitutional change itself? That is the question of Tibel's most recent book changing the rules constitutional amendments in democracies to 2025.
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The research question may seem similar to the previous one. After all, it seems to be a matter of moving to a higher level of hierarchy of norms from laws to the constitution. However, identifying the constitutional courts is difficult. It is the political space with in which no constitutional status quo could be changed with the agreement of all constitutional veto players.
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Constitutional amendment rules are often very complex. They are not only different for country to country. Different procedures cannot coexist in the same political system. These rules define how rigid constitutions are in the nature of constitutional beters. Despite these difficulties, Sebis argues through a formal model and proves through a statistical analysis. about 104 political systems. Something important. First, constitutional rigidity properly defined. Once
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you separate small constitutional amendments from truly relevant ones is negatively linked to the number of constitutional amendments approved over time. Second, it is positively linked to the independence of constitutional courts. Unlike the result of other recent researches, high level of constitutional rigidity corresponded to a smaller number of constitutional amendments. Political institution matter and they effect cannot be obscured by supposed cultural
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cultural variables. When the fre frequency of constitutional amendments is higher than we might expect based on constitutional rigidity, it is because the constitution is too long. It deals with too many topics and creates over time a greater demand for change in generation that come after the one during which the constitution itself was written. A case of timing inconsistency of preferences that as economists remind us leads to nothing good. In this account of George Sea's
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intellectual legacy, much has been left out. This includes the vast list of prizes and reconction recognition obtained during his professional life by our graduating student. Nevertheless, the works we have recalled already show why his contribution can be considered a classic of political science and social sciences more broadly. A classic as Italo Calvino suggested in a memorable essay on literary classics you recognize immediately because it has always existed. The
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idea that is at the basis or for example of veto players as Tibel himself very clearly admits has always existed but still following Calvin's lesson a classic hold the part or of a family tree is never a simple repetition or just a deeper study. A classic never finishes saying what he has to say. When you read and reread it, it shows itself to be new, unexpected and original. Why rereading
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pieces of George work to prepare this report of mine? This was exactly what I was experiencing. A scientific claxic I allow myself to add defines not only the territory of what we have managed to understand and display. It also defines the vast basis of what remains still to be known. Nothing influences more the research agenda of the new generation of scholars than new unanswered questions. These are the puzzle left as in inheritance inheritance by classics work does
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not escape this rule. But we are also certain that George will accompany us for a long time. Yet with his rigor, his insight and his passion, it will help us to rescue from the darkness of ignorance still unexplored territories of political and social action. Thank you, Professor Zukini. Professor Seelis, the floor is yours for the I for your lecture. I think you have to go on the I will go there but I want to thank you all. Thank you very much.
29:48
So what is the layout and and how am I going to see what you have a microphone there and I will see in there in the slides um George Sel's lecture is um titled cannot understand politics without following the decisions
30:16
Well, these two. What happened? I have it. Uh it's difficult after all this setup and thinking what am I going to say that is going to be new. But I want to show you how my mind developed about these issues because they are issues that are extremely important for political analysis. And when I was a undergraduate student, even when I was an interested person in politics in Greece, uh the way people were differentiating
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among systems was first of all by regime type whether it is a presidential or parliamentary and today you go to Wikipedia and the first thing that it tells you is that it is a presidential system or a parliamentary system and the second thing was whether the party system is a two-party system or a multi-party system and let me give you some examples that I have selected them uh on purpose uh the US is a presidential regime uh and so is Chile but US is two party Chile is
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a multi-party system and parliamentary regimes the UK is two party and Italy the first republic public and Greece are multi-party systems. Uh and this was the problem that I had because although I admired Italy and I was paying very close attention to what was happening at that time. Uh I was not thinking that it is similar to Greece. Greece in my mind looked like England because it had a single party government and Italy was always either a coalition government or the Christian
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democracy could have a minority government but it was always Christian democracy. So I I was puzzled by this situation and I started thinking about it and uh I'm going to tell you how this thoughts are going to be involved in our discussion today. We will discuss first of all I'm going to tell you a bit about veto players then I'm going to tell you about the interaction that they have with agenda
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setters. Then the difference between presidential and parliamentary regimes in a different way that what you the ones of you who do political science have seen it written. Uh institutional agenda setting powers in different countries uh including Italy uh and then speak about constitutions a bit constitutional amendments and the importance of the supreme courts. And what I am going to tell
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you is that all these things are in the same way of thinking. So let me start with vto players. Uh the way that I am thinking about political actors is that if you have a multi-dimensional space here I am going to use only two the budget and the environment every player has an ideal point that is this player Mr. one wants to have that much money spent for the budget and that much for the environment. And whenever he has to choose among two different positions,
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uh he's going to choose the one that is closer to his ideal point. For example, he prefers point P over point X and Y. He is indifferent between X and Y because they have the same distance from him and he prefers them over Z. Okay. So, anything that is closer to every political actor, he prefers it. And every time that he has a choice, he's going to select the one that he prefers. That is the basic logic. And let's see now what is going to happen. If we have two VTO
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players and the status quo is here, what each one of them is going to do is draw a circle around his ideal point going through the status quo and the intersection of these two areas is going to be what the political system can approve. So whenever we have this status quo, this is what can happen in this country. It's going to be in the win set of the status quo. Okay, let's see if what will happen if we have three actors. We have A, B and C. And if the status quo is here SQ1,
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then we are going to draw three circles going through A, B and C. And the intersection of these three circles is going to be this area here. And this is what can happen in this political system. If however the status quo is here SQ2 then these three circles that we are going to draw don't intersect anywhere except for SQ2 and as a result this status quo won't be able to be changed will remain forever as long as these video players have these preferences and therefore they
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won't even discuss it if they understand how the logic of the system There is however one area the area inside the triangle ABC which is called the core of the system which if the outcome is here if the status quo is here it cannot be changed at all. So think about trying to move this point here up B and C will object. If you want to go down, A will object. If it wants to go to the right,
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B will object. To the left, C will object. So this triangle will remain completely immute. And it is the core of the political system. You can find situations like that when you have a coalition government with multiple VO players who have different preferences and they cannot do anything.
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Okay. So this is the story of veto players and they can be either institutional what is specified by the constitution. It is the house and the senate in Italy or the house the senate and the president in the United States or they can be partisan inside the house. We are going to have lots of different parties and we will need a majority of these parties in order for the house to do anything. And therefore these players that will be required to be in the
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majority will be the partisan veto players inside the house. Okay, these are obvious ideas and I found them obviously in uh the founding fathers of the American constitutions. You can find them in Montesque. I started thinking that they must exist in ancient Greece like everything. Uh so I went to Aristotle and try to find out if he has said anything. No, he hasn't said anything. The Greeks didn't have the word veto. You guys are responsible for it. And uh I found it for the
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first time in the history of Rome. Le's history of Rome and he was making a step even further. So we are talking about many many years over 2,000 and a half thousand years. He was speaking about the tribunes and the plebs and he said that they had they were the plebs were upset because they only had veto power. uh they had only the right to protest by their veto and nor would the plebs ever
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have an equal share in the government till the executive authority was thrown open to them. Okay. And we are going to come to this we are going to rediscover what Levy was saying so many years ago. So first of all let me go to the initial puzzle. Uh we have these regimes and as I told you I was dissatisfied by this congruence here between Italy and Greece. I didn't see it. And if you put veto play layers US, Chile and Italy go in countries with multiple VTO
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layers while UK and Greece go with single vid layers. Okay. So by introducing this way of thinking we change the way that we understand the different countries. That's the first step. The second step is let's look now at the distinction between veto players and agenda setters and think about the initial picture that I presented to you. Uh but let's assume now that one veto player is
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the legislative and the other is the executive. If the legislative makes a proposal to the executive, then it's going to make this proposal here PL which is closer to its own preferences and will be approved by the executive. On the other hand, if the executive makes a proposal to the legislature, it will make this proposal here which is also closer to its preferences but it will be accepted by the legislature. So if we think that in an exe in a presidential system it is
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the legislature in Congress the Congress makes a proposal to the president while in a parliamentary system it is the government that makes a proposal to the parliament. The system difference is going to be that the one is going to decide here and the other there. And it is exactly the opposite from what the name suggests. We think about presidential system but it is the congress that makes a proposal and therefore the congress controls the agenda and makes whatever it wants
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and it is a parliamentary system and people think that it is the parliament but no it is the government and all the parliaments complain that they are rubber stamps and the president of the United States was complaining that he was he didn't have enough powers he was asking asking for line item veto. He got it. Clinton got it and then the Supreme Court said no. And so it doesn't exist. It exists in states in the United States but not in the government. So analyzing
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the situation gives us different understanding of how it works than the names that we have given.
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Let's look at the agenda set in institutions. Well, the classics of political science, Sartorii and Lighheart were speaking about them. And let me tell you, Sartorii was distinguishing between moderate pluralism, you all must have learned it, and polarized plarism, which was Italy. So his own country was a polarized polarizer and he tried to find out he's hustling for 20 pages and he's saying what is the distinction between polarized and moderate pluralism and it is the
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number of parties. Since we need an operational demarcation let us establish that the turning point for polarized pluralism is between five and six parties. That's the conclusion. So Italy, the first republic is a polarized pluralism because it has communists and it has fascists. Okay? And of course it is governed in the middle by the Christian democrats. But the same criterion if we use it for the ne Netherlands gives us a polarized pluralism
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country, the Netherlands. Okay, that's one approach. The other approach is the dualistic approach which he attributes to diver. In fact it is diver who differentiated between uh compar with between two party systems and multi-party systems. But Lightheart took exactly the same criteria and he said majoritarian systems and consociational systems. So majoritarian and consociationalism and his own country is a consociational country.
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But if you apply the criterion, Italy is also a consociational country. Let's put them together. It is a Italy and the Netherlands are together and they are polarized or consociationalism depending on how you look at it. Again, I didn't like it. It's logically inconsistent. It is argued by different people, but it doesn't make sense. So I went to agenda setting and the approach that somebody had done and there are the following things about agenda setting. First of all there
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are partisan advantages. If there is a majority then this majority can do whatever it wants. Okay? They will make the agreements between them and they apply the rules that they need and they are going to decide whatever they want. Whenever we have a majority that's it. we don't need to look at anything else. The second thing is if they don't have a majority then we should look at the institutional advantages and how the different governments are going to introduce legislation
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and what is going to be happening is extremely important and we are going to come to this and the third one is the positional advantages of the different governments. So this is a lexographic order that is if you have the first you don't care about the second or the third. If you have the second if you don't have the first and you have the second you are fine you don't care about the third. If you don't have neither the first or the second the only thing that remains
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is the third again. And if you don't have the third either you know just go home don't accept to become the prime minister. Okay. So, Daring who is a German historian had done an analysis of what the uh agenda setting powers are and he discriminated between who sets the plenary agenda, who controls the timetable at the committee stage and who can curtail debate before the final vote. On the basis of these distinctions, he had created this list of countries and you will see that
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Italy and the Netherlands are the ones where the parliament the first republic we're talking here uh are the ones that have the most powerful parliament. Okay. Uh so here is the story. If you don't have any institutional powers and you have a situation with five parties, let's say A, B, C, D, and E, each one of them around 20%, so you need three out of the five in order to make a government. Okay? If the president of the republic calls Mr. D to become the prime minister to form
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the government and Mr. D is going to present his preferences to the parliament then anything that three out of the five actors prefer over Mr. D is going to prevail in parliament. So I have designed the whole area. So Mr. D is going to be rolled all the time. Okay. He's not going to be able anything to do anything. That's why I told you if he would call the president of the Italian first
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republic would call the communist leader and say you take it he would say no I'm not going to be able to do anything. Okay. Now if he selects the centrist party here then it cannot be overruled by the parliament except in these areas here. So a centrist party like the Christian democracy can do whatever it wants whether it has allies or it doesn't have allies just because it is to use Brian Bar's term lucky. it is in the middle and therefore it will be able to prevail. Okay. So
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this is what is happening in Italy first republic and in Holland. Okay. We have centrist governments because we have strong parliaments and that's the only kind of governments that can exist in these countries. It's not that they are polarized or or consensual or anything else. Now let me go to amending the constitution because the same logic can apply there. Going back more than a century, a very famous lawyer and political scientist who became the dean in Colombia. John Burgus
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said that amending clause describes regulates amending power. This is the most important part of the constitution. Okay. Why does he say that? Why it's not human rights? Why it's not the budget? Why is it the amending power? Okay, I will come to that. But today people started analyzing constitutions and they were running regressions on many different countries and they were coming to
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different conclusions. They will say I ultimately arrive at two conclusions. First that the studies of amendment difficulty are doomed to failure and second that even in case they may not be they are not worth the effort. Another person says does constitutional amendment rule matter at all and the answer is no. What matters is culture. So what is happening? Why do we have this disagreement and how can we think about it? Today many many people the Russian congre gins
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and Melton kiadi bukur and rash I'm not going to talk about all of them they are speaking that the constitutional amendment rules don't matter okay and I'm going to try to explain to you why they matter think about a constitution that requires 57th amendment has a single
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chamber. Okay, only the house and it requires 57th of the house in order to change the constitution or in another case they will require 67th of the house. Let's see what happens. Okay, if it requires 57th then the all the outcomes are going to be in the area between three and five. Why? Because anything to the left of three will be overruled by five players. Three, four, five, six, seven. And everything to the right of five will be overruled by five players. 1 2 3 4 5. Okay.
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So the area between three and five is the core of the political system. It cannot be changed. Okay? If it is in the constitution, we don't even debate it. Okay? We have an absurd article in the Greek constitution article 16 that says that it's not allowed to have private universities. Okay, they have to be public. I think it is also same in North Korea. Okay, that's it. However, we don't have the required majority. We tried to do it. We didn't get the majority. We didn't
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do it. Okay. Now, we may change it. But the point is if you know that you are not going to have the majority, you are not going to bring it for a constitutional revision. Okay, that is the core of three fifths. This is the area from 3 to five. Let's see what happens with 67s. Uh it is from two to six. Same argument. Okay. But you see by increasing the qualified majority we have increased the difficulty of modifying the constitution. That's why constitutional amendment
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rules are important. Let's see what happens now. Let's take a country that changed the political opinion of the people moved to the right just like it happens today. But as you are going to see now, I'm going to change them much more than what happened in Germany under Hitler. Okay, they are going to be moving way to the right and the question is what can they do about the constitution again the final outcome is going to be if it is five 57th it's going to be between 3
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to five and if it is 67 between two and six okay let's put them together and we will see here is the old core from 3 to five and here is the new core from 3 to And here is the old core from 2 to six. And here is the new core from 2 to six. What is the change that can happen in this country when the people look what has happened? Uh the majority of the people have moved further to the right
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than the whole distribution of the people in the past. Okay. Mr. four now is further to the right slightly than Mr. 7 before. Okay, so we have gone 150% if you want to think about it to the right. Okay, it has never happened in the history of mankind. What is going to be happening? Well, the only possible change in the constitution is it's going to go from the point three here to the 3 prime here. This is the only change that can occur to the constitution under 35ths rule. And
54:47
if it is under under 57th rule, sorry, after six after after 67th rule, no change at all.
54:59
Okay. So, a good hope for the United States is that we have a constitution that cannot be changed. The bad part of the story is that uh Congress changes and it has already approved the positions of the president. Okay. But for the constitution, it cannot be changed. So if the court now decides about tariffs that it's not in the presidential powers then the tariffs are going to fall. If he decides that it is within the presidential powers then they
55:38
are going to stay. Okay. But what is going to happen in the United States after four years? There are some powers that the president is getting from the court and these powers are going to remain because any president is going to want them and then there are other things that he does because he has the majority of Republicans with him and that is not going to follow. Okay, first of all because it's not clear that it will be Republicans but for a new president
56:10
the Republicans are not going to be so monolithic in favor. So we have to distinguish between what is happening now. Is it a constitutional issue or is it a political issue? Okay. So constitutional rigidity is going to affect amendment frequency is going to affect amendment significance. And what we are going to be thinking is that when we have difficulty big constitutional rigidity, many different chambers and the president or and a referendum etc etc then we won't be able to do
56:51
frequent changes or important changes. But when we have a weak low level of rigidity then we will be able to do it. Whether we will want to do it or not we don't know. So sometimes we are going to have big changes but other times we won't. So the real situation is going to be looking like this if we analyze it. And that's how it looks. I took 104 countries and all the amendments and you can see
57:28
uh you are looking for Italy. I don't know too many countries difficult to find it. Okay, get the book that get the book. It's free and you will see it. Okay, so this is the outcome. You have higher rigidity and you have very few amendments and very low significance. You have uh low sign low rigidity and you have frequent amendments and high importance of amendment. I calculated the amendments. I classified the amendments in three different levels.
58:13
Fundamentally significant, very significant and insignificant. And the more important they are, the more it looks like this. Okay, that's another point. And here is the significance. If you take all amendments, the significance is at the level of two over a thousand. If you take major and fundamental, the significance is seven over 100,000. And here it doesn't come out as a number because it is so small. Okay. So this is for sure if you take only the fundamental
58:54
amendments. And finally constitutional rigidity and judicial independence. The argument is that if you have high constitutional core, big constitutional core, then you are not able to change the constitution. And because you cannot change it, then everything becomes a matter of constitutional interpretation. The court has very high powers. Let me show you what is happening. Here is the legislative court core. Here is the constitutional court which is bigger all the time
59:34
because it requires higher majorities. Okay. So the constitutional core court court in the United States has all this discretion. Okay. And it knows that it won't be overruled and so it's going to make more decisions, more independent decisions than a country like Greece, okay? or England because the core the constitutional core is small and this is how it's going to be looking that is if the constitutional rigidity is high the court is going to be with high discretion
1:00:16
if it is low then it won't have the possibility to make opposing dis decisions to the government and here is how they look data here are 30 countries unfortunately because it is really very difficult to evaluate these things. It has to be done by humans. That's a big problem. Uh you can't use AI to do it. People who did this step they use lots of money and then they said we are going to do it with computers but then they can't do it with computers so far. So this is the story.
1:00:56
So what did we discuss? Introduction to veto players, veto players and agenda setter, presidential and parallel regime, institutional agenda setting powers, constitutional amendments, constitutional rigidity and frequence of and significance of agenda of amendments and the importance of supreme courts. All these things are the same elephant. Okay, they are the same way of thinking about political regimes and it is that you cannot understand
1:01:33
politics without following the decisions. And if you want me to say it in a scientific way, following the decisions is the necessary condition to understand politics. So don't do it without it. Thank you very much.
1:02:05
So the proclamation must be in Italian to be legally valid in Italy. So
1:02:23
department in economics and political science. George
1:02:59
original methodolog.
1:03:24
Thank you very much.
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