Who Do Politicians Trust? An Experiment on Elite In-Office Bargaining Heuristics

• In Event: Political Elites and Policymaking

Abstract

Bargaining is a fundamental element of legislative politics. Politicians constantly negotiate with one another, and in doing so must make judgments about their peers' interests and predicted behaviors. How representatives judge their colleagues bears directly on their electoral fortunes, their success in achieving policy goals, and a host of other politically-critical outcomes. Yet we have little direct evidence on how these judgments are made and what considerations affect the way politicians form beliefs about their colleagues - not least because of the difficulty in recruiting sufficiently large numbers of elected officials to allow for valid statistical inference. Here, we investigate these questions using a modified ultimatum game instrument fielded to over one thousand incumbent local politicians in Norway, employing a scenario that closely follows in-council bargaining and experimentally manipulates information on the bargaining partner's reputation and experience in politics, both factors that we argue play a central role in how elected officials form judgments about colleagues. We provide evidence on if, under what conditions, and to what degree, politically-relevant individual characteristics of officials impact the success of in-office bargaining that drives policymaking.

Authors

• Lior Sheffer, Tel Aviv University

• Nina Serdarevic, Department of Economics

• Troy Saghaug Broderstad