A Dynamic Model of Legislative Bargaining

We prove existence of stationary Markov perfect equilibria in an infinite-horizon model of legislative bargaining in which the policy outcome in one period determines the status quo in the next. We allow for a multidimensional policy space and arbitrary smooth stage utilities. We prove that all such equilibria are essentially in pure strategies and that proposal strategies are differentiable almost everywhere. The model is general enough to accommodate much of the institutional structure observed in real-world legislatures and parliaments.