Standard theories of government in transition countries (Olson, M., Jr., 1995. Why the Transition from Communism Is So Difficult. Eastern Economic Journal 21, 437-462.) regard politicians and bureaucracies as “bandits” who extract the maximum resources from the public. Extraction is limited...

Recent formal models of legislatures have proved that equilibrium outcomes are extremely unlikely without either (1) extreme restrictions upon preferences or (2) constraints upon the agenda. The implication is that constant instability or dictatorial manipulation is the norm in politics. This...

The theory of ‘constitutional’ choice of voting rules developed by Buchanan and Tullock is an extended to an explicit decision-theoretic form. Voters in the ‘constitutional’ position choose what they believe will be their optimal share or majority rule for making social decisions, by...

This paper presents a model of centralized vote-trading in a legislature. In this model, legislators trade only with party leaders, who set prices at which they will buy needed vote-changes and sell promises to pass or defeat particular bills. Each legislator trades away votes on bills of little...

This paper examines equilibrium legislative party size, based upon scale economies in producing political outcomes. Political production — finding policies legislators desire and vote-trading to pass them — has strong scale economies up to, but not far beyond, a majority of the voters....