Legislative Bargaining with Changing Political Power

This paper studies legislative negotiations between two parties whose political power changes over time. The model has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium, which becomes very tractable when parties can make offers frequently. This tractability facilitates studying how changes in political power affect implemented policies. An extension of the baseline model analyses how elections influence legislative negotiations when implemented policies affect future political power. Long periods of legislative gridlock may arise when the time until the election is short and parties have similar levels of