Bicameralism and majoritarian equilibrium

Recent papers have established that bicameralism can support a non-empty core in majority voting games in two dimensional policy spaces. We generalise this result to the n-dimensional case, and provide a discussion of multi-cameralism. Bicameralism generates a core of potentially stable equilibria by institutionalising opposition between mutually oriented median voters, this provides a clear link with the standard median voter model and with more traditional analyses of bicameralism.An earlier version of this paper (Brennan and Hamlin, 1990), written in ignorance of the work of Hammond and Miller (1987, 1990), benefited from comments at the Public Choice Society meetings, Tucson; the European Public Choice Society meetings, Meersburg; the Center for Study of Public Choice, and the Universities of Chicago and Oxford. Hamlin is grateful for the support of visiting fellowships at ANU and All Souls College, Oxford.