Veto power is power

To have power over someone is to be able to influence them to do something they would otherwise not do, and/or not to do something they would otherwise do. This much I think is non-controversial. Suppose you're an exec sitting on the board of some large corporation. The board is deciding on a merger, and everything depends on you. You don't think that the merger is a good idea, and are planning to strike it down at the board meeting. But, before the meeting, you get a threat from a widely known hired gun who tells you that if you block the merger, he will kill you, your wife, children, and pretty much everyone dear to you. You know the guy's reputation and consider his threat credible; thus, at the board meeting you vote for the merger. The hitman leaves you and your family alone. Did the hitman have power over you? Of course he did. He didn't shoot you or any of your family members, but nonetheless he did make you do something you did not want to do. That's power.

In about three weeks, Poland will have presidential elections. There is a recurring theme you can hear from politicians, journalists, and voters alike: in Poland, the President has no power. All those who say this are wrong. The power of a Polish President is perfectly analogous to the power of the hitman in my example; therefore saying that the President has no power is just like saying that the hitman from my little example has no power.

Here's where the analogy is. Polish President has veto power, which works as follows. When a draft of a bill was accepted by the Sejm (that's our lower house of parliament) and Senat (that's the upper house) in majority voting, it gets sent to the Presidents. If the President signs it, that's it, the bill becomes law. But the President can veto the bill, in which case it gets sent back to Sejm. Now Sejm can override the veto, but in order to do this, a 3/5 majority of votes is needed. If the number of "nay" votes is less that 3/5, the bill is dead.

Now it is true that if the government coalition has 3/5 or more votes in Sejm, the President really does have no power. But if they don't have as many votes, he does. And just like the hitman has this power without even having to use his gun, so does the President have it without even having to veto anything. Suppose we have a conservative President and a very liberal government. The government is supported by a majority coalition in Sejm, but that coalition does not have a 3/5 of the votes; the Sejm is split 55/45 between liberal government supporters and conservative President supporters. Suppose also that the government coalition is drafting a bill regulating abortion. The coalitions' preference range from the view that abortions should be available on demand, no questions asked, no strings attached, to the view that it should be available but with some minor restrictions. The conservatives' views range from "no abortions for any reason" to "some abortions but with very severe restrictions." It's also known that the President wants to outlaw abortions altogether. What does the coalition want to do? Well, in a perfect world they'd write a bill that would allow unrestricted abortions, as that would be closest to their preferences. But they know the President will veto that bill, so instead to prevent the bill from being killed altogether, they write one that they think will get 3/5 of the votes; i.e., they include some postulates of the conservatives in it. In other words, even without there being an actual veto, there is a non-trivial difference between the bill that the coalition wants to write and the one they actually do write. That difference is exactly the power of the President.