The evolution of consensus through coordinated action

Abstract

Little is known about how the scope for deliberation can be compared across different branches of government. Two things need to happen for a consensus to emerge in a particular setting. Crucially, parties must coordinate to facilitate such provisions in the first place. Second, the quality of this coordination must be able to override the other biases of the environment in the long run. A parsimonious framework presents the necessary and sufficient conditions for both of these to happen across different settings—legislatures, bureaucracies, and judiciaries. Complicating matters are intra-group factions that have heterogeneous preferences. Interestingly, even if we assume factions that do not want to compromise outnumber those that do, it is the former that take the lead in solving the coordination problem in equilibrium. A related finding suggested by these comparisons is that as institutional environments become more complex—and move away from purely representative functions—the scope for generating this consensus is enhanced.