The Filibuster as a War of Attrition

Dion, Douglas; Boehmke, Frederick J.; MacMillan, William D.; Shipan, Charles R.

doi:10.1086/690223

Cited by 9 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Sometimes, collective choice in a committee is simplified into a two-player war of attrition such as the already mentioned study of filibuster by Wawro and Schickler (2006) and Dion et al (2018). 4 Multiplayer wars of attrition have been studied by Bulow and Klemperer (1999).…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even if the committee operates formally according to simple majority rules, the institution of legal obstruction, known as filibuster, creates a similar waiting game with costly delay (Wawro and Schickler, 2006;Dion et al, 2018). In addition to voting yes or no, filibuster enables individual committee members to obstruct the voting process, so that the vote on a bill cannot take place.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Voting as a war of attrition

Kwiek

Marreiros

Vlassopoulos

2019

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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We study communication in committees selecting one of two alternatives when consensus is required and agents have private information about their preferences. Delaying the decision is costly, so a form of multiplayer war of attrition emerges. Waiting allows voters to express the intensity of their preferences and may help to select the alternative correctly more often than simple majority. In a series of laboratory experiments, we investigate how various rules affect the outcome reached. We vary the amount of feedback and the communication protocol available to voters: complete secrecy about the pattern of support; feedback about this support; public communication; and within-group communication. The feedback no-communication mechanism is worse than no feedback benchmark in all measures of welfare-the efficient alternative is chosen less often, waiting cost is higher, and thus net welfare is lower. Our headline result is that adding communication restores net efficiency, but in different ways. Public communication does poorly in terms of selecting the correct alternative, but limits the cost of delay, while group communication improves allocative efficiency, but has at best a moderate effect on delay.

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Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Voting as a war of attrition

Kwiek

Marreiros

Vlassopoulos

2019

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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“…These days, filibusters in the US Senate have become partisan tactics (Koger, 2012). Many papers employ a similar setting in which there are only two players in a legislature that correspond to the majority party and the minority party to analyze filibusters (e.g., Bawn & Koger, 2008;Dion et al, 2016;Stone, 2013). 16 After the minority party prevents a vote, a new bill will not be proposed (i.e., a closed rule).…”

Section: Equilibriummentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are other sources of its costs: Planning takes time, other bills may not be passed, and so on (Bawn & Koger, ; Dion, Boehmke, MacMillan & Shipan, ). If these additional costs are introduced, the derived equilibrium would be sustained more easily.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kishishita

2018

J Public Economic Theory

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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.

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“…Our presentation is a bit brief, so we refer interested readers to the discussion in Dion et al . (2016) and its very detailed Supplementary technical appendix.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A duration estimator for a continuous time war of attrition game

Boehmke

Dion

Shipan

2020

PSRM

Self Cite

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Abstract We developed a maximum likelihood estimator corresponding to the predicted hazard rate that emerges from a continuous time game of incomplete information with a fixed time horizon (i.e., Kreps and Wilson, 1982, Journal of Economic Theory27, 253–279). Such games have been widely applied in economics and political science and involve two players engaged in a war of attrition contest over some prize that they both value. Each player can be either a strong or weak competitor. In the equilibrium of interest, strong players do not quit whereas weak players play a mixed strategy characterized by a hazard rate that increases up to an endogenous point in time, after which only strong players remain. The observed length of the contest can therefore be modeled as a mixture between two unobserved underlying durations: one that increases until it abruptly ends at an endogenous point in time and a second involving two strong players that continues indefinitely. We illustrate this estimator by studying the durations of Senate filibusters and international crises.

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The Filibuster as a War of Attrition

Cited by 9 publications

References 14 publications

Voting as a war of attrition

Voting as a war of attrition

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

A duration estimator for a continuous time war of attrition game

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