Abstract
This study investigates how supermajority rules in a legislature affect electoral competition. To this end, we construct a probabilistic voting model and show that supermajority rules magnify the divergence of policy platforms generated by aggregate uncertainty about the electoral outcome. Thus, supermajority rules involve an important trade-off: they induce the convergence of policies for non-commitment issues, while also causing the divergence of policies for commitment issues. In addition, we show that the effect of aggregate uncertainty on the optimal voting rule depends on whether its source is a large district-specific shock or a small number of competitive districts.
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