Seniority in Legislatures

Abstract

We construct a stochastic model of a legislature with an endogenously determined seniority system. We model the behavior of the legislators as well as their constituents as an infinitely repeated divide-the-dollar game. The game has a stationary equilibrium with the property that the legislature imposes on itself a non-trivial seniority system, and that incumbent legislators are always reelected.

Testing Models of Distributive Politics using Exit Polls to Measure Voters’ Preferences and Partisanship

“…between spending and past share vote for the incumbent president's party (Fleck, 2003;Larcinese, et al, 2006;Garrett and Sobel, 2003). 10 Finally, other theorists emphasize the importance of factors such as proposal power (Baron and Ferejohn, 1989), legislative seniority (McKelvey and Riezman, 1992), over-and under-representation (Ansolabehere et al, 2003;Knight, 2004), committee structure, presidential leadership, and universalism (Weingast et al, 1981;McCarty, 2000). If factors such as these are the main drivers of distributive spending, then there may be little relationship between spending and partisanship or ideology.…”

Legislative Bargaining and Coalition Formation

“…The model has later been generalized and applied to a wide variety of questions in economics and political science. For example, Baron and Ferejohn [3] use the model to analyze the role of committees, Baron [1] studies how legislative equilibria depend on characteristics of the goods provided, Chari et al [6] use the model in their analysis of split-ticket voting, McKelvey and Riezman [12] use it for an analysis of seniority in legislatures, Merlo [11] studies legislative bargaining in a stochastic environment, and Eraslan [7] uses the model in a study of corporate bankruptcy.…”

Distributive Politics with Primaries

“…Finally, other theorists emphasize factors such as proposal power (Baron and Ferejohn, 1989), legislative seniority (McKelvey and Riezman, 1992), over-and under-representation (Ansolabehere et al, 2003;Knight, 2004), committee structure, presidential leadership, and universalism (Weingast et al, 1981;McCarty, 2000).…”