Veto Bargaining in the Non-partisan Settings of the Confederate Congress.

This paper looks at the veto bargaining process in the non-partisan settings of the Confederate States of America. In a comparison of the U.S. and Confederate Houses Jenkins (1999) has demonstrated that the vote choice of individual members of Congress was influenced by the existence or absence of parties. We make a similar argument and claim that the absence of parties was responsible for frequent vetoes and override attempts with only one successful legislative override in the Confederacy. By relying on the Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, we show that the absence of parties had several consequences regarding the nature of the veto bargaining process as well as the quality of legislative output. Signaling and the anticipation of preferences were difficult between the chambers of Congress and the president which explains the large number of vetoes by President Davis. Without parties legislative coalitions became fragile while the lack of partisan leadership structures made floor activity highly unstructured, less predictable and time consuming. All this sheds light on why override attempts were often made, but rarely succeeded. In general, our findings suggest that legislative parties matter - and to a significant degree - not only in structuring the vote choice, but also when it comes to interbranch bargaining and conducting business on the floor. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]