This paper targets the intersection of two generally distinct literatures: political control of administrative agencies and distributive politics. Based on a comprehensive database of federal spending that tracks allocations from each agency to each congressional district for every year from 1984 through 2007, we analyze the responsiveness of agency spending decisions to presidential and congressional influences. Our research design uses district-by-agency fixed effects to identify the effects of a district’s political characteristics on agency spending allocations. Because most agencies distribute federal funds, we are able to provide empirical evidence about the relationship between structural features of administrative agencies and the degree of political responsiveness of their spending decisions. Because allocation of funds constitutes a readily comparable metric over time and across agencies, we are able to evaluate a host of competing hypotheses about the political control of the bureaucracy by both Congress and the President.

Members of an assembly that chooses policies on a series of multidimensional ideological issues have incentives to coalesce and coordinate their votes, forming political parties. If an agent has an advantage to organize a party at a lower cost, a unique party forms and the policy outcome moves away from the Condorcet winning policy, to the benefit of party members. If all agents have the same opportunities to coalesce into parties, at least two parties form. The results are robust to the consideration of an endogenous agenda, and to generalizations of the distribution of preferences.

Abstract: I analyze a ‘divide the dollar ’ game among Small and Large ‘states ’ in a Bicameral legislature where the Upper House represents the regions and the Lower House represents the population. I characterize a stationary equilibrium-- as in Baron and Ferejohn (1989)-- when the overall probability of recognition of legislators from Large (Small) states is identical in each period. The optimal proposal is a solution to a(n Integer) Linear Programming problem. A Minimum Winning Coalition need not involve bare majorities in both Houses: a bare majority in one House is, in general, accompanied by an excess majority in the other. When funds are allocated among disproportionately populated Federal units, the votes of representatives from the same region in the two Houses are correlated so that oversized coalitions in one House may result. I also analyze the effect of institutional features such as the probability of Large (Small) states being recognized or the majority requirements in the two Houses on the distributional outcome between the two groups of states. The analysis pertains to a number of existing forms of Bicameral negotiations (Conference committees with a ‘unit rule, ’ one-round Navette, and-- under particular assumptions-- infinite round Navette) while the underlying policy space is of importance to many Federations.

We experimentally test competing theories of three-player majoritarian bargaining models with fixed, known reservation values. Subjects are randomly assigned to three roles: a proposer and two types of voters. Each role is randomly assigned a reservation value, i.e. a given amount of money he/she will receive if the proposal is rejected. These values are known to all players. Proposers then can make a take-it-or-leave-it offer on how to split a fixed, known amount of money among the players. If a majority of players accepts the proposal, the players ’ payoffs are determined by the proposal; if the proposal is rejected, each player receives his or her reservation value. We assess the ability of three behavioral hypotheses – selfish-subgame perfect, egalitarian, and “fair ” (inequality averse) behavior – to account for our results. Our primary design variable is the proposer’s reservation value, which allows us to obtain different implications from each hypothesis. We find that each hypothesis is inconsistent with our data in important respects. In particular, subjects strongly respond to changes in reservation values as if In 1978 Romer and Rosenthal published an alternative to Black’s median voter theory for

We study a model of sequential bargaining in which, in each period before an agreement is reached, the proposer’s identity (and whether there is a proposer) are randomly determined; the proposer suggests a division of a pie of size one; each other agent either approves or rejects the proposal; and the proposal is implemented if the set of approving agents is a winning coalition for the proposer. The theory of the fixed point index is used to show that stationary equilibrium expected payoffs of this coalitional bargaining game are unique. This generalizes Eraslan (2002) insofar as: (a) there are no restrictions on the structure of sets of winning coalitions; (b) different proposers may have different sets of winning coalitions; (c) there may be a positive probability that no proposer is selected.

In this paper I study the strategic implications of coalition formation in an assembly. A coalition forms a voting bloc to coordinate the voting behavior of its members, acting as a single player and affecting the policy outcome. In a game of endogenous coalition formation, I show that voting blocs form in equilibrium, and in an assembly with two parties I show how the incentives to join a bloc depend on the types of the agents, the sizes of the parties, and the rules the blocs use to aggregate preferences. JEL Classification: D71, D72.