Competing for power in multilateral negotiations under majority and unanimity rules

Competition for power is a costly practice present in organizations and groups where collective decisions are made. In a multilateral bargaining experiment, we study how different agreement rules affect competition for power through a contest for the right to propose a distribution of benefits. Although unanimity leads to less wasteful competition investments, it also generates a greater delay in negotiations and a higher likelihood of disagreement. These opposing inefficiencies offset each other across a wide range of bargaining horizons, contest technologies, voting procedures, and subject pools. We find no statistically significant evidence of efficiency dominance by either rule over the parameters studied once competition for power is taken into account. Under equal proposal rights absent a contest, agreements are reached more quickly, demonstrating the causal effect of competition for power on bargaining gridlock and its compounding effect on efficiency losses. In addition, we find that bargaining behavior is conditioned on prior power-seeking efforts: subjects reward higher effort with higher shares, indicating that efforts enter fairness considerations despite their unproductive and competitive nature.