Partisan strength and legislative bargaining

Abstract

We extend the canonical Baron–Ferejohn model of majoritarian legislative bargaining in order to analyze the effects of partisanship on bargaining outcomes. We consider three legislators, two of whom are party affiliated, with each partisan placing some value on the share of the dollar obtained by his copartisan in addition to his own share. We characterize the equilibrium of our model as a function of the strength of party affiliation and the degree to which the legislators have concern for the future; and we determine how the equilibrium varies in response to changes in these two parameters. We show how partisanship advantages the affiliated legislators relative to the nonpartisan and identify the circumstances in which a majority party legislator proposes a bipartisan outcome.