 Can political gridlock undermine checks and balances? A lab experimentAlvaro Forteza, Irene Mussio and Juan Pereyra () Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2024, vol. 108, issue C Abstract: If checks and balances are aimed at protecting citizens from the government’s abuse of power, why do they sometimes weaken them? We address this question in a laboratory experiment in which subjects choose between two decision rules: with and without checks and balances. Voters may prefer an unchecked executive if that enables a reform that, otherwise, is blocked by the legislature. Consistent with our predictions, we find that subjects are more likely to weaken checks and balances when there is political gridlock. However, subjects weaken the controls not only when the reform is beneficial but also when it is harmful. Keywords: Political agency; Separation of powers; Checks and balances; Lab experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:108:y:2024:i:c:s2214804323001544 DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2023.102128 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier |
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