Representation, sophisticated voting, and the size of the gridlock region

Abstract

We propose a formal model that investigates the institutional cause of the expansion of the gridlock region in a legislative body under supermajority rule. We show that the interaction between a legislative election and the supermajority rule in the legislative policy-making process causes an expansion of the size of the gridlock region under certain circumstances. More specifically, if the position of the status quo is neither too moderate nor too extreme, then certain voters will be incentivized to elect a more extreme representative than themselves, and this sophisticated voting results in the expansion of the size of the gridlock region. As a result, our model demonstrates that the expansion of the gridlock region is caused in part by sophisticated voting independent of the voters’ ideological distribution.

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

“…The second is strategic voting. Though sincere voting is reasonable when voters value voting expressively over voting strategically, strategic voting may matter under supermajority rules because voters may benefit by strategically blocking the supermajority (Kang, 2017). Formal analyses of these issues are left to future work.…”

“…We assume that each constituency is homogeneous, so that voters' ideal policy is given by 1 2 . 12 Owing to post-election legislative bargaining, voters may strategically cast their votes (Kang, 2017). Since such strategic voting is not our main focus, we instead assume expressive voting, that is, voters receive utilities by expressing their support for their preferred candidate who would yield higher utilities if elected regardless of whether they are actually elected or not (e.g., Brennan et al, 1998;Hamlin and Jennings, 2011).…”

“…This is because the electorate takes into account post-election policymaking, creating large incentives for parties to diverge. Kang (2017) analyzes supermajority rules and shows that certain voters strategically elect a more extreme representative than themselves under supermajority rules. 8.…”