Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T03:55:56.035Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agendas and the Control of Political Outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Peter C. Ordeshook  and
Thomas Schwartz
Peter C. Ordeshook
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
Thomas Schwartz
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A considerable theoretical literature argues that if everyone votes sincerely, then an agenda setter has near dictatorial influence on final outcomes, whereas if everyone votes strategically, then an agenda setter's power is considerably reduced. This literature assumes that all feasible agendas are of a special type called amendment agendas. But actual legislative and committee agendas—notably those found in Congress—often are not of this type. Once we expand the domain of feasible agendas to include all types allowed by common parliamentary practice, the influence of agendas on legislative outcomes expands, even with strategic voting. Besides showing with counterexamples that previous results do not extend to a more realistic domain of agendas, we prove some theorems that specify the limits (such as they are) of an agenda setter's power.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 179 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bach, Stanley. 1981. Parliamentary Strategy and the Amendment Process: Rules and Case Studies of Congressional Action. Public Choice Workshop, Washington University, St. Louis. Photocopy.Google Scholar
Banks, Jeffrey. 1985. Sophisticated Voting Outcomes and Agenda Control. Social Choice and Welfare 1:295–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enelow, James, and Koehler, David. 1980. The Amendment in Legislative Strategy: Sophisticated Voting in the U.S. Congress. The Journal of Politics 42:396–413.Google Scholar
Farquharson, Robin. 1969. Theory of Voting. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hammond, Thomas H. 1986. Agenda Control, Organizational Structure, and Bureaucratic Politics. American Journal of Political Science 30:379–420.Google Scholar
McKelvey, Richard D. 1979. General Conditions for Global Intransitivities in Formal Voting Models. Econometrica, 47:1085–1112.Google Scholar
McKelvey, Richard D. 1986. Covering, Dominance, and Institution Free Properties of Social Choice. American Journal of Political Science. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
McKelvey, Richard D., and Niemi, Richard. 1978. A Multistage Game Representation of Sophisticated Voting for Binary Procedures. Journal of Economic Theory 18:1–22.Google Scholar
Miller, Nicholas. 1980. A New Solution Set for Tournaments and Majority Voting. American Journal of Political Science 24:68–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moulin, Herve. 1979. Dominance-solvable Voting Schemes. Econometrica 47:1337–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moulin, Herve. 1985. Choosing from a Tournament. Institute for Mathematics and Applications, University of Minnesota. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Ordeshook, Peter C., and Palfrey, Thomas. 1986. Agendas, Strategic Voting, and Signaling with Incomplete Information. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University. Typescript.Google Scholar
Plott, Charles, and Levine, Michael. 1976. A Model of Agenda Influence on Committee Decisions. American Economic Review 68:146–60.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. 1958. The Paradox of Voting and Congressional Rules for Voting on Amendments. American Political Science Review 52: 349–66.Google Scholar
Riker, William H. 1982. Liberalism Against Populism. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Thomas. 1986. The Logic of Collective Choice. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Shepsle, Kenneth, and Weingast, Barry. 1984. Uncovered Sets and Sophisticated Voting Outcomes with Implications for Agenda Control. American Journal of Political Science 28:49–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Terry. 1984. Procedural Structure. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.