Policy Reforms and the Amount of Checks & Balances
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Date
2022-08
Publication Type
Working Paper
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yes
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Abstract
We examine how democracies choose their amount of checks and balances (C&B). For this purpose, we consider a simple model of political competition with costly policy reforms. The cost of a marginal reform is determined endogenously at the constitutional phase—i.e. before policies are chosen—through the choice of (the amount of) C&B. We characterize the set of stable C&B for different constitutional rules which vary depending on (i) who has the power to propose changes to C&B and (ii) on the qualified majority used for approving such changes. Our main results show that stable C&B always exist, are never zero, lead to gridlock, and are higher if the proposal-maker is the party in government. We also find that higher majority requirements for constitutional changes and more polarized societies are conducive to larger sets of stable C&B.
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published
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Journal / series
Economics Working Paper Series
Volume
22/373
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
CER-ETH – Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich
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Subject
elections; democracy; political polarization; reform costs; constitutions; checks and balances
Organisational unit
03729 - Gersbach, Hans / Gersbach, Hans