Ulric B. and Evelyn L. Bray Social Sciences Seminar

Abstract: We study a principal choosing the ideology of a representative who will participate in legislative bargaining over spatial policy. We find pervasive incentives for strategic delegation and, specifically, moderation. A key strategic force in our setting is that the representative's ideology affects legislature-wide expectations about bargaining. We highlight how these expectations affect what can pass and, in turn, alter extremist proposals. We find a general preference for moderation --- specifically, (i) moderate principals prefer more centrist representatives and (ii) centrist principals want centrist representatives who will be veto players. Moreover, under standard assumptions, all principals (except the very extreme) want to skew inward towards a centrally located \emph{locus of attraction}, which varies with the balance of extremist proposal power. Broadly, principals strategically skew their representative to counteract this balance of power.

Written with Daniel Gibbs (Virginia Tech).