Open AccessAgendas in legislative decision‐making
Author(s) -
Horan Sean
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
theoretical economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.404
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1555-7561
pISSN - 1933-6837
DOI - 10.3982/te2618
Subject(s) - legislature , voting , variety (cybernetics) , political science , order (exchange) , social choice theory , independence (probability theory) , computer science , outcome (game theory) , law and economics , economics , politics , mathematical economics , law , artificial intelligence , mathematics , statistics , finance
Despite the wide variety of agendas used in legislative settings, the literature on sophisticated voting has focused on two formats: the so‐called Euro–Latin and Anglo–American agendas. In the current paper, I introduce a broad class of agendas whose defining structural features—history‐independence and persistence—are common in legislative settings. I then characterize the social choice rules implemented by sophisticated voting on agendas with these two features. I also characterize the rules implemented by more specialized formats (called priority agendas and convex agendas) whose structure is closely related to the prevailing rules for order‐of‐voting used by legislatures. These results establish a clear connection between structure and outcomes for a wide range of legislative agendas.