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Bargaining and Bicameralism
Author(s) -
Parameswaran Giri
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12179
Subject(s) - legislature , state (computer science) , disadvantaged , economics , bargaining power , preference , political science , law and economics , political economy , law , microeconomics , algorithm , computer science
In bicameral legislatures, the protection of small states often motivates the malapportionment of the upper house. Using a legislative bargaining model, I show that malapportionment may produce the opposite effect. Under unicameralism, same‐state legislators are shown to not inherently be coordinated to cooperate, diminishing the fear of a big‐state conspiracy. By contrast, under bicameralism, preference complementarities enable upper‐house legislators to effectively coordinate their state delegations, and this skews the expected allocation in favor of big states. Hence, unless bicameralism significantly increases their agenda power, small states will fare even worse under bicameralism whenever they are disadvantaged under unicameralism.