TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ganghof, Steffen
T1  - Equality-based comparison how to justify democratic institutions in the Real World
JF  - Politics
N2  - Political scientists regularly justify particular democratic institutions. This article explores two desiderata for such justifications. The first is a formal equality baseline which puts the burden of justification on those who favour more unequal institutions. This baseline is seen as an implication of the rule of law. The second desideratum, the comparison requirement, builds on the first: adequate justifications of particular institutions must compare them to the best alternative, and this comparison must consider the costs for political equality. The two desiderata are applied to political science debates about the proportionality of the electoral system and bicameral systems of legislative decision-making.
KW  - electoral systems
KW  - second chambers
KW  - political equality
KW  - institutional design
KW  - public justification
Y1  - 2013
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9256.12002
SN  - 0263-3957
VL  - 33
IS  - 2
SP  - 101
EP  - 111
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Eppner, Sebastian
A1  - Ganghof, Steffen
T1  - Institutional veto players and cabinet formation
BT  - the veto control hypothesis reconsidered
JF  - European journal of political research : official journal of the European Consortium for Political Research
N2  - Are potential cabinets more likely to form when they control institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority vetoes? Existing evidence for a causal effect of veto control has been weak. This article presents evidence for this effect on the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies between 1955 and 2012. It also shows that the size of the effect varies systematically across political-institutional contexts. The estimated causal effect was greater in countries that eventually abolished the relevant veto institutions. It is suggested that the incidence of constitutional reform is a proxy for context-specific factors that increased the incentives for veto control and simultaneously provided a stimulus for the weakening of institutional veto power.
KW  - government formation
KW  - veto players
KW  - second chambers
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12172
SN  - 0304-4130
SN  - 1475-6765
VL  - 56
IS  - 1
SP  - 169
EP  - 186
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -