Who Blinks First? Legislative Patience and Bargaining with Governors

When legislators and governors clash over the size of American state government, what strategic factors determine who wins? Efforts to address this question have traditionally relied upon setter models borrowed from the congressional literature and have predicted legislative dominance. We offer an alternative simplification of state budget negotiations that follows the “staring match” logic captured by dividethe-dollar games. Our model predicts that governors will often be powerful but that professional legislatures can stand up to the executives when long legislative sessions give them the patience to endure a protracted battle over the size of the budget. In this article, we present our analysis of an original dataset comprising gubernatorial budget proposals and legislative enactments in the states from 1989 through 2004. The results indicate strong empirical support for our predictions.