Legislative Bargaining with Reconsideration
Abstract. We present a dynamic model of legislative bargaining in which policymaking proceeds until the agenda setter has no more incentive to make a new proposal to replace the previously approved policy. We characterize the stationary equilibria of the game and show that in a class of pure-strategy equilibria, a majority of voters without proposal power have an incentive to protect each others' benefits to secure their own long-term bargaining positions in the legislature. As a consequence, the value of proposal power is restrained. In an extended version of the model that includes public goods production we show that the lack of commitment due to the possibility of reconsideration enhances policy efficiency.