A Priori Bounds on Legislative Bargaining Agreements

In a workhorse model of legislative bargaining with spatial preferences, I establish easy to compute bounds on all equilibrium acceptable agreements, proposals, and outcomes. The approach constitutes a feasible method to incorporate equilibrium restrictions from the model in correlational and structural empirical studies of legislatures, avoiding the computation of actual equilibria. It also yields a number of theoretical insights on the centrality of equilibrium legislative decisions, the relation of such equilibrium outcomes with social choice solution sets, and the effect of changes on voting and proposal-making rights. These theoretical results highlight the broad conclusion that the proper functioning of democratic institutions is highly contingent on other institutional features besides the assignment of voting rights.