Veto Players and Law Production in Parliamentary Democracies: An Empirical Analysis.

This article investigates hypotheses generated through the veto players' theory. The fundamental insight of this theory is that an increase in the number of veto players (for all practical designs in parliamentary systems the number of parties in government) and their ideological distance from the same another will reduce the ability of the pair government and parliament to bring forward significant laws. In addition, the number of significant laws increases with the duration of a restraint and with an increase in the ideological difference between existing and previous government. These