The Politics of Blame: Bargaining before an Audience Export

@article{citeulike:4043629, abstract = {An important class of bargaining problems involve two negotiators who send signals to a third party. We show that these signaling incentives significantly influence (1) the proposals that they offer and (2) their decisions to accept or reject proposals. Consider the following case: Congress makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer (a bill) to the president, who either signs or vetoes it. A third party is uninformed about the president's preferences; however, by observing the bill that Congress writes and the president's veto decisions, it can learn about these preferences. Since in our model the president wants to appear moderate to voters, while Congress wants him to appear extreme, Congress sometimes writes a bill that it knows the president will veto. Thus, despite Congress and the president being completely informed, an uninformed third party causes the outcome to be Pareto inefficient. The model generates many empirical predictions, and we test one of these-that the president's approval rating should drop after a veto.}, author = {Groseclose, Tim and Mccarty, Nolan}, citeulike-article-id = {4043629}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2669362}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/2669362}, doi = {10.2307/2669362}, issn = {00925853}, journal = {American Journal of Political Science}, keywords = {negotiation, politics, psychology}, number = {1}, pages = {100--119}, posted-at = {2009-02-13 15:00:44}, priority = {2}, publisher = {Midwest Political Science Association}, title = {The Politics of Blame: Bargaining before an Audience}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2669362}, volume = {45}, year = {2001} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:4043629 L3 - citeulike-article-id:4043629 N2 - An important class of bargaining problems involve two negotiators who send signals to a third party. We show that these signaling incentives significantly influence (1) the proposals that they offer and (2) their decisions to accept or reject proposals. Consider the following case: Congress makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer (a bill) to the president, who either signs or vetoes it. A third party is uninformed about the president's preferences; however, by observing the bill that Congress writes and the president's veto decisions, it can learn about these preferences. Since in our model the president wants to appear moderate to voters, while Congress wants him to appear extreme, Congress sometimes writes a bill that it knows the president will veto. Thus, despite Congress and the president being completely informed, an uninformed third party causes the outcome to be Pareto inefficient. The model generates many empirical predictions, and we test one of these-that the president's approval rating should drop after a veto. IS - 1 JF - American Journal of Political Science SN - 00925853 EP - 119 TI - The Politics of Blame: Bargaining before an Audience PB - Midwest Political Science Association VL - 45 SP - 100 KW - negotiation KW - politics KW - psychology AU - Groseclose, Tim AU - Mccarty, Nolan PY - 2001/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2669362 ER -