Nominations for Sale

Models of nomination politics in the US often \u85nd "gridlock " in equilibrium because of the super-majority requirement in the Senate for the con\u85rmation of presidential nominees. A blocking coalition often prefers to defeat any nomi-nee. Yet empirically nominations are successful. In the present paper we explore the possibility that senators can be induced to vote contrary to their nomi-nal (gridlock-producing) preferences through contributions from the president and/or lobbyists, thus breaking the gridlock and con\u85rming the nominee. We model contributions by the president and lobbyists according to whether payment schedules are conditioned on the entire voting pro\u85le, the vote of a senator, or the outcome. We analyze several extensions to our baseline approach, including the possibility that lobbyists may \u85nd it more productive to o¤er inducements to the president in order to a¤ect his proposal behavior, rather than trying to induce senators to vote for or against a given nominee