Less than unanimous agreement on the reason for unanimous agreement: Comment

Conclusion

The purpose of this comment has not been to question the main point of Holcombe's paper. Unanimous legislative agreement, if it occurs, could be inefficient for the reasons put forth by Holcombe. The motivation for this comment is that Holcombe's explanation for the existence of legislative unanimity is not a compelling one since it begs an important question. That question is: If the cooperation exists to maintain a unanimous coalition, why does not the cooperation exist to maintain a less-than-unanimous coalition? Unless Holcombe can answer this question satisfactorily, his explanation for legislative unanimity is fundamentally flawed.