Legislative bargaining and coalition formation

The finite horizon version of D. P. Baron and J. Ferejohn's [1989, Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 83, 1181-1206] legislative bargaining model is investigated. With three or more periods, a continuum of divisions is supportable as subgame perfect equilibria. There exist equilibria where coalitions larger than a minimal winning coalition receive strictly positive shares. With sufficiently patient players and a sufficiently long horizon, any interior distribution is supportable as an equilibrium. In contrast, a generic uniqueness result applies when introducing heterogenous time preferences. The unique backwards induction equilibrium in the perturbed game is nonstationary, and neither the original (symmetric) nor the perturbed game provides guidance for equilibrium selection in the infinite game. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science.