Interbranch Negotiations over Policies with Multiple Outcomes

William G. Howell and Saul P. Jackman

American Journal of Political Science, 2013, vol. 57, issue 4, 956-970

Abstract: Whereas presidents represent the entire nation, members of Congress serve districts and states. Consequently, presidents and members of Congress often disagree not only about the merits of different policies but also about the criteria used to assess them. To investigate the relevance of jurisdictional−and by extension criterial−differences for policymaking, we revisit classic models of bargaining under uncertainty. Rather than define uncertainty about the mapping of one policy into one outcome, as all previous scholars have done, we allow for every policy to generate two politically relevant outcomes, one local and another national. We then identify equilibria in which the president's utility is increasing in the value that a representative legislator assigns to national outcomes. As an application of this theory, we analyze budgetary politics in war and peace. We find that during periods of war, when members of Congress assign greater importance to the very same national outcomes that preoccupy presidents, congressional appropriations more closely reflect presidential proposals.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12027

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:amposc:v:57:y:2013:i:4:p:956-970

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Journal of Political Science from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().