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A Carrot and Stick Approach to Agenda-Setting

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  • Dahm, Matthias
  • Glazer, Amihai,

Abstract

This paper models a legislature in which the same agenda setter serves for two periods, showing how he can exploit a legislature (completely) in the first period by promising future benefits to legislators who support him. In equilibrium, a large majority of legislators vote for the first-period proposal because they thereby maintain the chance of belonging to the minimum winning coalition in the future. Legislators may therefore approve policies by large majorities, or even unanimously, that benefit few, or even none, of them. The results are robust; but institutional arrangements (such as entitlements) can reduce the agenda setter's power by reducing his discretion to reward and punish legislators, and rules (such as sequential voting) can increase a legislator's ability to resist exploitation. Keywords: Legislative bargaining, distributive politics, agenda-setting, proposal power. JEL C72, D72, D78.

Suggested Citation

  • Dahm, Matthias & Glazer, Amihai,, 2013. "A Carrot and Stick Approach to Agenda-Setting," Working Papers 2072/222199, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:urv:wpaper:2072/222199
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    Cited by:

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    2. Agranov, Marina & Cotton, Christopher & Tergiman, Chloe, 2020. "Persistence of power: Repeated multilateral bargaining with endogenous agenda setting authority," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    3. Manav Raj, 2021. "A house divided: Legislative competition and young firm survival in the United States," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(13), pages 2389-2419, December.
    4. Jan Zápal, 2017. "Crafting consensus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 169-200, October.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Jocs no-cooperatius (Matemàtica); 32 - Política;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

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