Filibusted? The mixed effects of “going nuclear”
2026-04-24
Perennial gridlock in Washington has led to many political and media elites calling for an end to the filibuster. But would it matter? In this paper, we derive a series of legislative bargaining models and show that eliminating the filibuster would likely affect gridlock in a narrow set of circumstances. Using data on gridlock from Binder (2015) , we conduct simulations to examine the effect of removing the filibuster on outcomes. The results demonstrate that, while some believe that getting the rid of the filibuster is a panacea, the practical effects of doing are more muted.