Equilibrium refinement through negotiation in binary voting

We study voting games on binary issues, where voters might hold an objective over some issues at stake, while willing to strike deals on the remaining ones, and can influence one another’s voting decision before the vote takes place. We analyse voters’ rational behaviour in the resulting two-phase game, showing under what conditions undesirable equilibria can be removed as an effect of the prevote phase

"The More the Merrier: The Impact of Enlargement on EU Budgetary Negotiations"

Why were some of the European Union (EU) budgets vetoed in the earlier years of the EU but we do not observe any vetoes lately? Recent research on the EU budget proposes insufficient explanations of the reduction in conflict on budgetary negotiations. The literature on enlargement is pessimistic about the effects of enlargement, especially when dealing with EU funds where member states are expected to fight more. The existing bargaining models offer some insights on the cooperative dynamics in the EU, but provide no empirical testing. I argue that enlargement stabilizes the budgetary process and makes cooperation more durable among the budgetary authorities – the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. Using formal theory and regression analysis, I show that every country that joins the EU increases the bargaining space on the budget and thus makes agreement more likely

On the strategic use of representative democracy in international agreements

We consider as endogenous the choice of the delegation' rule in a political integration process between two countries. We study three potential types of delegation: strong, weak or no delegation, this last case corresponding to a referendum. We show that populations decide to bind themselves by delegating the national policy decision to a "powerfull conservative representative", in order to improve their bargaining position. These non-cooperative behaviors of countries when they decide on their delegation rule induce negative political externalities between countries, which cancel the gains achieved by the internalization of economic externalities in the case of political integration. We then propose two extensions. First, we assume a pre-play game where the countries choose whether or not to initiate political integration. Secondly, we examine the consequences of ratification by referendum. We conclude that a Pareto improvement of the political integration process would be to specify within the international treaty itself the means for its ratification; more precisely, to incorporate a formal ratification procedure, corresponding to an ex post referendum.Delegation;International Agreements;Nash Bargaining Solution;Political Integration;Ratification;Referendum

On the strategic use of representative democracy in international agreements

We consider as endogenous the choice of the delegation' rule in a political integration process between two countries. We study three potential types of delegation: strong, weak or no delegation, this last case corresponding to a referendum. We show that populations decide to bind themselves by delegating the national policy decision to a "powerfull conservative representative", in order to improve their bargaining position. These non-cooperative behaviors of countries when they decide on their delegation rule induce negative political externalities between countries, which cancel the gains achieved by the internalization of economic externalities in the case of political integration. We then propose two extensions. First, we assume a pre-play game where the countries choose whether or not to initiate political integration. Secondly, we examine the consequences of ratification by referendum. We conclude that a Pareto improvement of the political integration process would be to specify within the international treaty itself the means for its ratification; more precisely, to incorporate a formal ratification procedure, corresponding to an ex post referendum.Delegation, International Agreements, Nash Bargaining Solution, Political Integration, Ratification, Referendum

Power Brokers: Middlemen in Legislative Bargaining

We consider a model of decentralized bargaining among three parties. Parties meet one-on-one after being randomly matched, and can sell or buy votes to one another. The party with a majority of the votes can decide to implement its preferred policy or extend negotiations to capture additional rents. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium in which a party acts as an intermediary, transferring resources and voting rights among parties that wouldn't negotiate directly with one another. These conditions are generic, do not require special frictions, and include `well-behaved' (i.e., single-peaked) preference profiles

The British Constitution’s failure to manage existential risk: back to basics

Brexit comes at a precarious time for the UK – with an ineffective Opposition, continuing calls for Scottish independence and a referendum result that gives no guidance on what kind of exit the British people want. In the second part of a lecture delivered at the Goethe University in Frankfurt on 23 November, David Kershaw warns that the UK’s constitutional arrangements, unlike those of most European countries, provide a relatively open door to populist drivers for radical change. Given the risks associated with Brexit, much weight is accordingly placed on the representative function of the Commons – but there is concern that the reliance on direct democracy has undermined it. If the Commons fails to perform this role then the Lords must do so

Scaling Up Deliberative Democracy as Dispute Resolution in Healthcare Reform: A Work in Progress

Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) denotes the problem of jointly localizing a moving platform and mapping the environment. This work studies the SLAM problem using a combination of inertial sensors, measuring the platform's accelerations and angular velocities, and a monocular camera observing the environment. We formulate the SLAM problem on a nonlinear least squares (NLS) batch form, whose solution provides a smoothed estimate of the motion and map. The NLS problem is highly nonconvex in practice, so a good initial estimate is required. We propose a multi-stage iterative procedure, that utilises the fact that the SLAM problem is linear if the platform's rotations are known. The map is initialised with camera feature detections only, by utilising feature tracking and clustering of  feature tracks. In this way, loop closures are automatically detected. The initialization method and subsequent NLS refinement is demonstrated on both simulated and real data

The response speed of the International Monetary Fund. Bruegel Working Paper 2013/03, 16 July 2013

The more severe a financial crisis, the greater has been the likelihood of its management under an IMF-supported programme and the shorter the time from crisis onset to programme initiation. Political links to the United States have increased programme likelihood but have prompted faster response mainly for ‘major’crises. Over time, the IMF’s response has not been robustly faster, but the time sensitivity to the more severe crises and those related to fixed exchange rate regimes did increase from the mid-1980s. Similarly, democracies had tended to stall programme initiation but have become more supportive of financial markets’ demands for quicker action

"The silent revolution": how the staff exercise informal governance over IMF lending

his paper examines how the staff exercise informal governance over lending decisions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund). The essential component of designing any IMF program, assessing the extent to which a borrowing country is likely to fulfill its policy commitments, is based partly on informal staff judgments subject to informal incentives and normative orientations not dictated by formal rules and procedures. Moreover, when country officials are unable to commit to policy goals of the IMF, the IMF staff may bypass the formal channel of policy dialogue through informal contacts and negotiations with more like-minded actors outside the policymaking process. Exercising informal governance in these ways, the staff are motived by informal career advancement incentives and normative orientations associated with the organization’s culture to provide favorable treatment to borrowers composed of policy teams sympathetic toward their policy goals. The presence of these sympathetic interlocutors provides the staff both with greater confidence a lending program will achieve success and an opportunity to support officials who share their policy beliefs. I assess these arguments using a new dataset that proxies shared policy beliefs based on the professional characteristics of IMF staff and developing country officials. The evidence supports these arguments: larger loan commitments are extended to countries where government officials and the Fund staff share similar professional training. The analysis implies informal governance operates in IOs not just via state influence but also through the evolving makeup, incentive structure, and normative orientations of their staffs