Agendas in legislative decision‐making

Abstract

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.

Two‐stage majoritarian choice

“…1414 The same is also true for the choice rules considered by Apesteguia et al (2014) and Horan (2021), which include the successive elimination rule from Example 2 and the amendment rule from footnote 8. …”

“…Since it is implied by the acyclicity of P c 2 , Weak WARP is not expressly required for either result.14 The same is also true for the choice rules considered byApesteguia et al (2014) andHoran (2021), which include the successive elimination rule from Example 2 and the amendment rule from footnote 8.…”

“…See Exercise 9.4(c) ofMoulin (1988, p. 250) for s P and the Corollary to Theorem 9.5 (p. 247) for a P Horan (2021). shows that a much broader range of binary trees (which he calls "simple agendas") have the same feature.…”

“…1515 See Exercise 9.4(c) of Moulin (1988, p. 250) for and the Corollary to Theorem 9.5 (p. 247) for . Horan (2021) shows that a much broader range of binary trees (which he calls “simple agendas”) have the same feature. For , simply note that the top cycle cannot gain new members by improving one of its members. …”

“…For and , see Exercise 9.5 of Moulin (1988, p. 250). A much broader class of binary trees introduced by Horan (2021), called priority agendas , have the same feature.…”