Limited Foresight and Gridlock in Bargaining

Parth Parihar

Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2025, vol. 20, issue 1, 71-100

Abstract: status quostatus quopolicy polarizationThis paper contributes to the study of gridlock by analyzing a model of repeated two-party bargaining in which agreements and proposal power are in general both endogenous. I introduce a key object, the foresight horizon, to index the number of downstream agreements agents incorporate into their decision-making on current policy. Gridlock occurs in equilibrium if and only if foresight is limited. I relate equilibrium behavior within the specific setting of legislative bargaining to observed phenomena in public policy-making. While there is short-run correlation of future policy with the , policy converges in the long-run of equilibrium play to an invariant distribution, independent of where it begins. I also demonstrate that — the gap between parties' actionable proposals — is increasing in their foresight.

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00022032

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