Attempts to test these theories about the impact of institutions on policies and
policy making have resulted in mixed conclusions. Armingeon (2002) tests variables
from Lijphart’s typology and comes to the conclusion that one must distinguish
between diVerent dimensions of ‘‘consensus’’ democracy: corporatism (the organization
of interests), consociationalism (need for agreement amongst relatively large
numbers of parties), and counter-majoritarian institutions (institutions for blocking
majority decisions). Huber, Ragin, and Stephens (1993) and Schmidt (2002) Wnd
support for the impact of constitutional structures and both veto points and veto
players on social policy, but Wnd that one must examine interaction eVects between
partisanship and political structures. In a study of attempts to renegotiate the policies
of coordinated market economies, Immergut and Kume (2006) and collaborators
Wnd that ‘‘public beliefs’’ set limits to the ability of policy makers to transform their
institutional constraints on policy 567
institutions of social and political coordination. Thus, in moving from studying past
policies to examining newer patterns of politics and policies, political institutional
theories have begun to move from a focus on institutional blockages to look more at
processes of political competition and public persuasion.