Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book brings an exciting and innovative new approach to the study of politics today. It introduces political bargaining, a process at the heart of all political and economic exchanges in contemporary society and the very essence of politics itself, to provide a new framework and fresh insights to modern political science. The authors trace the prevalence of bargaining processes in politics from the abstract level of individual human interaction and the `state of nature’ to the more concrete political or institutionalized level. They introduce students to theory -- the basic models of game theory, rational choice theory and positivist approaches; practice -- the practical manifestations of political b
Electoral and Post Electoral Bargaining in Parliamentary Systems
Electoral and Post Electoral Bargaining in Parliamentary Systems
5.1 Introduction
According to common wisdom, legislators represent the preferences of their constituents when making decisions as to how to allocate scarce resources. This wisdom notwithstanding, the next section argues that modem legislative bodies, as we know them today, were originally devised as bargaining mechanisms, and not as representative mechanisms. In the third section we discuss mechanisms used to block the path of different groups into parliamentary bodies. The fourth section returns to the spatial theory and shows that legislative bodies are unlikely to be effective representative arenas if, and inasmuch as they are meant to, aggregate individual preferences into social choices.
The rest of the chapter develops the argument that legislative ...
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