IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/amposc/v60y2016i1p175-189.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Signaling through Obstruction

Author

Listed:
  • John W. Patty

Abstract

Obstruction is a time‐honored tradition in legislative politics. In many cases, obstruction can be foreseen to be ultimately unsuccessful, and in some of these cases, purely costly even to the obstructor. In this article, I construct a model of obstruction in which the individual obstruction of a fait accompli policy proposal is potentially informative precisely and ironically because it is inefficient. The theory, based on the legislators' reelection motivations, offers comparative static predictions about the frequency and length of obstruction as a function of the individual characteristics of the legislator and his or her electoral setting, including the legislator's value for reelection, the appeal of the legislator's challenger, the legislator's individual‐specific seniority, competence, and/or valence, and the visibility of the legislator's obstruction efforts to the voter. Finally, the theory illustrates the potential for transparency of legislators' individual actions to be strictly welfare reducing, even in the absence of pandering.

Suggested Citation

  • John W. Patty, 2016. "Signaling through Obstruction," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(1), pages 175-189, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:1:p:175-189
    DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12202
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12202
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ajps.12202?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anders Gustafsson, 2019. "Busy doing nothing: why politicians implement inefficient policies," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 282-299, September.
    2. Lee, Barton E., 2022. "Gridlock, leverage, and policy bundling," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    3. Alexander V. Hirsch & Jonathan P. Kastellec, 2022. "A theory of policy sabotage," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 34(2), pages 191-218, April.
    4. Asger Lau Andersen & David Dreyer Lassen & Lasse Holbøll Westh Nielsen, 2020. "Irresponsible parties, responsible voters? Legislative gridlock and collective accountability," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-19, March.
    5. Guido Merzoni & Federico Trombetta, 2022. "The Political Economy of Technocratic Governments," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis2204, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).

    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:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:1:p:175-189. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5907 .

    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.