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Buying Supermajorities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Tim Groseclose  and
James M. Snyder Jr.
Tim Groseclose
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
James M. Snyder Jr.
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract

Minimal winning coalitions have appeared as a key prediction or as an essential assumption of virtually all formal models of coalition formation, vote buying, and logrolling. Notwithstanding this research, we provide a model showing that supermajority coalitions may be cheaper than minimal winning coalitions. Specifically, if vote buyers move sequentially, and if the losing vote buyer is always granted a last chance to attack the winner's coalition, then minimal winning coalitions will generally not be cheapest, and equilibrium coalitions will generally not be minimal winning. We provide results relating equilibrium coalition size with preferences of the legislators and vote buyers, and we show that minimal winning coalitions should occur in only rare cases. We discuss these results in light of empirical work on coalition size and suggest other possible avenues for testing our model.

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 90 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 303 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1996

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