IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v117y2023i4p1429-1447_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Do Politicians Bargain? Evidence from Ultimatum Games with Legislators in Five Countries

Author

Listed:
  • SHEFFER, LIOR
  • LOEWEN, PETER JOHN
  • WALGRAVE, STEFAAN
  • BAILER, STEFANIE
  • BREUNIG, CHRISTIAN
  • HELFER, LUZIA
  • PILET, JEAN-BENOIT
  • VARONE, FRÉDÉRIC
  • VLIEGENTHART, RENS

Abstract

Politicians regularly bargain with colleagues and other actors. Bargaining dynamics are central to theories of legislative politics and representative democracy, bearing directly on the substance and success of legislation, policy, and on politicians’ careers. Yet, controlled evidence on how legislators bargain is scarce. Do they apply different strategies when engaging different actors? If so, what are they, and why? To study these questions, we field an ultimatum game bargaining experiment to 1,100 sitting politicians in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. We find that politicians exhibit a strong partisan bias when bargaining, a pattern that we document across all of our cases. The size of the partisan bias in bargaining is about double the size when politicians engage citizens than when they face colleagues. We discuss implications for existing models of bargaining and outline future research directions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sheffer, Lior & Loewen, Peter John & Walgrave, Stefaan & Bailer, Stefanie & Breunig, Christian & Helfer, Luzia & Pilet, Jean-Benoit & Varone, Frédéric & Vliegenthart, Rens, 2023. "How Do Politicians Bargain? Evidence from Ultimatum Games with Legislators in Five Countries," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 117(4), pages 1429-1447, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:117:y:2023:i:4:p:1429-1447_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055422001459/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:117:y:2023:i:4:p:1429-1447_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.