IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v81y1987i01p179-199_19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Agendas and the Control of Political Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Ordeshook, Peter C.
  • Schwartz, Thomas

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Ordeshook, Peter C. & Schwartz, Thomas, 1987. "Agendas and the Control of Political Outcomes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 179-199, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:81:y:1987:i:01:p:179-199_19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400193669/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bhaskar Dutta & Matthew O. Jackson & Michel Le Breton, 2004. "Equilibrium agenda formation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 23(1), pages 21-57, August.
    2. Kathleen Bawn & Gregory Koger, 2008. "Effort, Intensity and Position Taking," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(1), pages 67-92, January.
    3. Apesteguia, Jose & Ballester, Miguel A. & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan, 2014. "A foundation for strategic agenda voting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 91-99.
    4. Aki Lehtinen, 2007. "The Welfare Consequences of Strategic Voting in Two Commonly Used Parliamentary Agendas," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 1-40, August.
    5. Itai Sened, 1995. "Equilibria in Weighted Voting Games with Sidepayments," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 7(3), pages 283-300, July.
    6. John Patty & Elizabeth Penn, 2011. "A social choice theory of legitimacy," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(3), pages 365-382, April.
    7. Meszerics, Tamás, 1997. "Stratégiai viselkedés és bizottsági döntés [Strategic behaviour and committee decison]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 687-697.
    8. Aki Lehtinen, 2015. "Strategic Voting and the Degree of Path-Dependence," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 97-114, January.
    9. Dutta, Bhaskar & Jackson, Matthew O. & Le Breton, Michel, 2002. "Voting by Successive Elimination and Strategic Candidacy," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 190-218, March.
    10. Scott Moser, 2015. "Majority rule and tournament solutions," Chapters, in: Jac C. Heckelman & Nicholas R. Miller (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Voting, chapter 6, pages 83-101, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Thomas Schwartz, 2008. "Parliamentary procedure: principal forms and political effects," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 353-377, September.
    12. Bjørn Rasch, 2014. "Insincere voting under the successive procedure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 499-511, March.
    13. Itai Sened, 1991. "Contemporary Theory of Institutions in Perspective," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(4), pages 379-402, October.
    14. Tore Sager, 2001. "Manipulative Features of Planning Styles," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(5), pages 765-781, May.
    15. Bernard GROFMAN & Joseph GODFREY, 2014. "Aspiration Models of Committee Decision Making," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2014-04-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    16. Fany Yuval, 2002. "Sophisticated Voting Under the Sequential Voting by Veto 1," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 343-369, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:81:y:1987:i:01:p:179-199_19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.