Policies that promote the common good may be politically infeasible if legislators representing ‘losing’ constituencies are punished for failing to promote their district's welfare. We investigate how varying the local and aggregate returns to a policy affects voter support for their incumbent. In our first study, we find that an incumbent who favours a welfare-enhancing policy enjoys a discontinuous jump in support when their district moves from losing to at least breaking even, while the additional incremental political returns for the district doing better than breaking even are modest. This feature of voter response, which we replicate, has significant implications for legislative politics generally and, in particular, how to construct politically feasible social welfare-enhancing policies. In a second study, we investigate the robustness of this finding in a competitive environment in which a challenger can call attention to a legislator's absolute and relative performance in delivering resources to their district.

To what extent can presidents exert gatekeeping power in opposition-led legislatures? Drawing on a study of roll rates in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, where presidents lack legislative majorities and often face a legislature controlled by the opposition, this article argues that gatekeeping power is divided among multiple actors. It finds that presidents exert weak gatekeeping power over the agenda. While presidents and their parties are rarely defeated in votes related to presidential initiatives, they generally create stable, informal coalitions with opposition parties to pass their bills. Moreover, the agenda-setting power of the president and the president’s party is weaker with bills that originate in the legislative branch, where the party is occasionally rolled on legislative initiatives and during the amendment stage if it is not also the median party.