Dissolution Power and Redistribution

While democracies vary in whether they allow their chief executives to dissolve parliament and call an early election, recent theories of the economic consequences of executive-legislative institutions in comparative politics pay little attention to dissolution power. I develop a model to analyze how chief executives' ability to dissolve the legislature influences the stability and level of redistribution. It shows that dissolution power critically alters the ability of partisan chief executives to change policy. The resulting differences in redistributive policy across constitutions with and without dissolution power emerge despite holding constant the number of veto players. They are also not driven by the confidence vote emphasized by existing models. Turning to some observational data from advanced democracies, I find that economic policy is more variable over time where chief executives may schedule early elections. This supports a key implication of the model