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Published December 1992 | public
Journal Article

Seniority in Legislatures

Abstract

We construct a stochastic model of a legislature with an endogenously determined seniority system. We model the behavior of the legislators as well as their constituents as an infinitely repeated divide-the-dollar game. The game has a stationary equilibrium with the property that the legislature imposes on itself a non-trivial seniority system, and that incumbent legislators are always reelected.

Additional Information

© 1992 American Political Science Association. This paper was funded in part by National Science Foundation Grants SES-864348 and SES-9022932 to the California Institute of Technology and SES-9023056 to the University of Iowa. This paper was written in part while Raymond Riezman was a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology. We thank Ken Shepsle and Jeff Banks for useful comments on earlier drafts.

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023