Strategic delegation and voting rules

Principals, such as voters or districts, typically benefit by strategically delegat-ing their bargaining and voting power to representatives different from themselves. There are conflicting views in the literature, however, of whether such a delegate should be "conservative " (status quo biased) or instead "progressive " relative to his electorate. I show how the answer depends on the political system in general, and the majority requirement in particular. A larger majority requirement leads to conservative delegation, but "sincere " delegation is always achieved by the optimal voting rule. The results may be interpreted as normative recommendations for the EU’s future "Constitution"