Political deadlocks and distributional information: The value of the veil

Contractarian normative theory relies on the veil of ignorance construct to generate the political consensus required for its theories of justice. By eliminating distributional information, the veil is presumed to facilite consensus building by reducing conflict over the distributional effects of proposed constitutional rules or institutions. This paper explores the extent to which excessive distributional information might also impede the ordinary day-to-day decision making of democratic institutions. Our analysis suggests that distributive information makes political deadlocks under majority rule more likely. Statistical evidence suggests that the efficacy of the U.S. Congress has been reduced by the dramatic increase in distributional information made available to it over the past twenty five years.The authors would like to thank an anonymous referee and the participants of the Center for Study of Public Choice Luncheon Work Shop for helpful comments and suggestions. Helpful comments were also provided by Bruce Benson and Z.A. Spindler at the 1988 meeting of the Public Choice Society. We also wish to thank Jack Triplett for providing us with a pre-publication copy of the page proofs of his piece on computer price indices.