An informational role of supermajority rules in monitoring the majority party's activities

Abstract

There often exists a supermajority rule that enables the minority party to delay or prevent a vote on a bill. I construct a two‐period model consisting of a representative voter, self‐interested parties, and a media outlet. In the model, the majority party has an incentive to misrepresent the voter's optimal policy. I show that the minority party's attempt to block a vote (e.g., a filibuster) can signal this misrepresentation. Interestingly, the key is that the minority party and the mass media are complementary in creating the signal. Overall, the results suggest that supermajority rules could be beneficial even for the majority of voters.

Do supermajority rules really deter extremism? the role of electoral competition

“…Li (2001) and Persico (2004) show that supermajority rules can mitigate a free-riding problem about information acquisition. Kishishita (2019) shows that supermajority rules enable the minority party to signal the majority party's behaviors, allowing voters to control the latter. 10.…”

Informative campaigning in multidimensional politics: The role of naïve voters

“…Specifically, our model's novelty is that a media outlet's decision on whether to gather news endogenously depends on candidates’ campaign strategies. Outside of political campaign literature, two papers indicate that the opposing party's filibuster can convey information about the majority party through the mass media (Kishishita, 2019; Stone, 2013).…”

“… 13. The following setting is similar to that of Kishishita (2019) and originally based on that of Besley and Prat (2006). Note that media outlets report news on policy preferences as well in reality.…”

“…Even under the possibility of media capture (Besley and Prat 2006), the result would hold under some conditions. This is because the logic behind Kishishita’s (2019) results can be applied, in that the opposition party's whistleblowing through a filibuster is robust against media capture.…”