If both parties would prefer [both provisions passed] to [neither provision passed], wouldn’t the incentive be to propose a combined bill with both provisions?
Agreed. I guess I’m trying to illustrate a couple of things:
How things are sequenced as bills matters a whole lot. The bills presented individually would fail (unless people engage in tit-for-tat), but the combined bill would succeed. It would be much better if we had a guarantee that any sequence of bills would be voted on just as if it were the best combined bill (where “best” means something like utilitarian-best).
Tit-for-tat can save the day in this example, but the “dark side” of tit-for-tat is when we get in defection spirals. In that case, a combined bill might be politically infeasible. This seems like a realistic model. The two parties can be angry enough with each other that they can’t cooperate.
If both parties would prefer [both provisions passed] to [neither provision passed], wouldn’t the incentive be to propose a combined bill with both provisions?
Agreed. I guess I’m trying to illustrate a couple of things:
How things are sequenced as bills matters a whole lot. The bills presented individually would fail (unless people engage in tit-for-tat), but the combined bill would succeed. It would be much better if we had a guarantee that any sequence of bills would be voted on just as if it were the best combined bill (where “best” means something like utilitarian-best).
Tit-for-tat can save the day in this example, but the “dark side” of tit-for-tat is when we get in defection spirals. In that case, a combined bill might be politically infeasible. This seems like a realistic model. The two parties can be angry enough with each other that they can’t cooperate.