Dynamic Legislative Bargaining with Endogenous Agenda Setting Authority

Download or read book Dynamic Legislative Bargaining with Endogenous Agenda Setting Authority written by Christopher Cotton and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Models of repeated legislative bargaining typically assume that an agenda setter is randomly selected each period, even if the agenda setter in the previous period successfully passed a proposal. In reality, successful legislative agenda setters (e.g., speakers, committee chairs) tend to hold onto power. We propose two alternative models in which successful agenda setters retain power. In the first model, a successful agenda setter automatically keeps power. Such an assumption is easy to work with and results in a policy equal to that in a traditional non-repeated game. In the second model, an agenda setter requires the support of a legislative majority to retain power. Such an assumption is realistic and results in the most-equitable policy outcome. Compared to both of these models, the standard random-selection assumption exaggerates the agenda setter's ability to extract rent from the legislative process, and underestimates the well- being of the legislative majority.