Ideology and endogenous constitutions

Economic Theory, 2013, vol. 52, issue 3, 885-913

Abstract: We study a legislature where decisions are made by playing an agenda-setting game. Legislators are concerned about their electoral prospects but they are also genuinely concerned for the legislature to make the correct decision. We show that when ideological polarization is positive but not too large (and the status quo is extremely inefficient), institutions in which the executive has either no constraints (autocracy) or many constraints (unanimity) are preferable to democracies that operate under an intermediate number of constraints (simple majority rule). When instead ideological polarization is large (and the status quo is only moderately inefficient), simple majority turns out to be preferable. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013

Keywords: Majority rule; Position-taking preferences; Ideological polarization; Strategic interactions; Agenda-setting game; D7; D02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1007/s00199-011-0668-9

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