Electoral Accountability, Checks and Balances and Political Gridlock

Separation of powers and checks and balances are usually regarded as key institutions that complement elections in the control of elected officials. But some analysts and many politicians also warn that excessive checks on the... [ view full abstract ]

Separation of powers and checks and balances are usually regarded as key institutions that complement elections in the control of elected officials. But some analysts and many politicians also warn that excessive checks on the executive can lead to political gridlock. We present a political agency model with governance concerns that helps to think systematically in this tradeoff. We embed separation of powers and checks and balances in a model of electoral accountability with both moral hazard and adverse selection, in which citizens care about a valence and a positional issue. This relatively simple but rich framework allows us to study how and when checks and balances (i) reinforce, and sometimes undermine, electoral accountability, and (ii) cause political inaction ---which is not necessarily detrimental in our setting---. Equipped with this tool, we discuss citizens support for the separation of powers and checks and balances.