Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
addClaim

Supermajority Politics: Equilibrium Range, Diversity, and Compromise

Authors: Aseem Mahajan; Roland Pongou; Jean-Baptiste Tondji;

Supermajority Politics: Equilibrium Range, Diversity, and Compromise

Abstract

Do legislative voting rules affect the diversity of policies observed across structurally similar political economies, and if so, to what extent? To what degree do these voting rules affect legislative compromise and the stability of the social optimum? Using a spatial model of political competition with single-peaked preferences, we examine these questions in settings where changing incumbent or proposed policies requires supermajority consensus. We develop three findings pertaining to equilibrium policies that are immune to change by any supermajority coalition. First, we prove that at least one equilibrium policy exists and then find the maximum number of equilibrium policies that exist as a function of the supermajority's size. Policy diversity increases, in a nontrivial manner, in the size of the supermajority coalition needed to change the status quo, and the Median Voter Theorem is a particular case of the result with minimal policy diversity. Second, we find the optimal level of compromise needed by a leader to ensure that her proposed policy is not defeated and establish that compromise decreases in the supermajority's size. Third, we identify the minimal supermajority rule that ensures the stability of the social optimum. The robustness of these findings and their theoretical and policy implications are further investigated in the paper.

  • BIP!
    Impact byBIP!
    selected citations
    These citations are derived from selected sources.
    This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    0
    popularity
    This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
    Average
    influence
    This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    Average
    impulse
    This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
    Average
Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
Upload OA version
Are you the author of this publication? Upload your Open Access version to Zenodo!
It’s fast and easy, just two clicks!