A carrot and stick approach to agenda-setting

Matthias Dahm and Amihai Glazer

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 116, issue C, 465-480

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Working Paper: A Carrot and Stick Approach to Agenda-Setting (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:116:y:2015:i:c:p:465-480

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.05.012

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