Buisseret & Bernhardt: Reelection and Renegotiation: International Agreements in the Shadow of the Polls

Peter Buisseret (Univ. of Chicago - Harris School of Public Policy) & Dan Bernhardt (Univ. of Illinois - Economics) have published Reelection and Renegotiation: International Agreements in the Shadow of the Polls (American Political Science Review, Vol. 112, no. 4, November 2018). Here's the abstract:

We study dynamic international agreements when one of the negotiating parties faces a threat of electoral replacement during negotiations, when agreements made before the election are the starting point for any subsequent renegotiation, and when governments cannot commit to future negotiation strategies. Conflicts of interest between governments may be softened or intensified by the governments’ conflicts of interest with voters. We characterize when the threat of electoral turnover strengthens the prospect for successful negotiations, when it may cause negotiations to fail, and how it affects the division of the surplus from cooperation. We also show how changes in domestic politics—including uncertainty about the preferences of domestic political parties—affect a domestic government’s ability to extract greater concessions in negotiations.