Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This paper considers pure strategy Nash equilibria of non-cooperative legislative bargaining models. In contrast to existing legislative bargaining models, we derive legislators behavior from stochastic utility maximization. This approach allows us to prove the existence of a stationary Pure Local and Global Nash Equilibrium under rather general settings. The mathematical proof is based on a fixed point argument, which can also be used as a numerical method to determine an equilibrium. We characterize the equilibrium outcome as a lottery of legislators’ proposals and prove a <jats:italic>Mean Voter Theorem</jats:italic>, i.e., proposals result dimension-by-dimension as a weighted mean of legislators’ ideal points and are Pareto-optimal. Based on a simple example, we illustrate different logic of our model compared to mixed strategy equilibrium of the legislative bargaining model suggested by Banks and Duggan (Am Polit Sci Rev 94(1):73–88. <jats:ext-link xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" ext-link-type="doi" xlink:href="10.2307/2586381">https://doi.org/10.2307/2586381</jats:ext-link>, 2000).</jats:p>