Yup. What Francis Fukiyama calls the "vetocracy". The entire stack of US policy work, legislation, lawmaking has many, many veto points. For better or worse.

Yup. What Francis Fukiyama calls the "vetocracy". The entire stack of US policy work, legislation, lawmaking has many, many veto points. For better or worse. The functional purpose of the US Senate is to prevent legislation. "Congress is where good bills go to die." -- legislative aide, personal friend One consequence is strong tendancy for big bang (punctuated equilibrium) over incrementalism. A recurring scenario is that once a coalition has a veto-proof supermajority, they bum rush as much legislation as possible, before the next mid-term election dissolves the coalition. That's why progressives and reformers have always advocated for majority rule. Another consequence of vetocracy is empowering the executive. Explaining why the rise of executive orders. Alas, many are happy with the status quo, gridlock, dysfunction. My brother, for instance. Who believes that any day spent legislating is a crime against humanity. What reactionaries like my brother don't grasp is someone will fill the power vacuum, continue to make decisions. Where legislators are impotent, the admins, commissions, lobbyists, executives, judges happily make their own laws and govern without any accountability. The neoreactionaries (monarchists), like Peter Theil, explicitly prefer the Aristolian philosophy king model. Because people (the polis) are stupid, only natural leaders who are benign dictators would rule, and so forth.