“Killer” Amendments in Congress

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Wilkerson
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Baseline Measure ◽  
Ols Regression ◽  
Virtual Absence ◽  
Legislative Outcomes

For more than three decades, social choice theorists and legislative scholars have studied how legislative outcomes in Congress can be manipulated through strategic amendments and voting. I address the central limitation of this research, a virtual absence of systematic empirical work, by examining 76 “killer” amendments considered during the 103d and 104th congresses. I trace the effects of these amendments on their related bills using archival sources, test for strategic voting using NOMINATE as the baseline measure of legislator preferences across a range of issues, and explore with OLS regression why some killer amendments are more strategically important than others. The findings indicate that successful killer amendments and identifiable strategic voting are extremely rare. In none of the cases examined could the defeat of a bill be attributed to adoption of an alleged killer amendment.

The polarization dynamics of electoral reforms

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Zachary Peskowitz ◽  
James Szewczyk
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Spatial Voting ◽  
Electoral Reforms ◽  
New Entrants ◽  
Legislative Outcomes ◽  
Electoral Performance ◽  
Policy Persistence

Abstract Electoral reforms affect legislative outcomes by influencing incumbent legislators’ behavior, new entrants’ behavior, and the probability that incumbents are replaced with new entrants. Empirical work on electoral reforms and polarization has focused on new entrants’ behavior. We employ a simple decision theoretic framework with partial incumbent policy persistence and spatial voting to examine the three channels jointly. We show that a reform designed to encourage ideological moderation produces larger effects on polarization when the reform is implemented than when it is removed. The key insight is that implementing a moderation-inducing reform generates a set of challengers who are more likely to defeat incumbents while the incumbents are more likely to win reelection when the reform is removed. We then empirically examine how elections and legislative polarization respond to unlimited PAC contributions in state legislatures. Examining incumbents’ decisions to stand for reelection, the electoral performance of incumbents who do run, and partisan polarization, we find empirical support for our predictions.

Strategic Voting in Plurality Elections

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Kselman ◽  
Emerson Niou
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Work ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Theoretical Problem ◽  
Direct Derivation ◽  
Precise Data ◽  
Formal Result ◽  
Competing Models ◽  
Voter Choice ◽  
Methodological Difficulties

This paper extends the Calculus of Voting of McKelvey and Ordeshook, providing the first direct derivation of the conditions under which voters will vote strategically: choose their second-most preferred candidate in order to prevent their least-preferred candidate from winning. Addressing this theoretical problem is important, as nearly all empirical research on strategic voting either implicitly or explicitly tests hypotheses which originate from this seminal model. The formal result allows us to isolate the subset of voters to which strategic voting hypotheses properly apply and in turn motivates a critical reevaluation of past empirical work. In making this argument, we develop a unified and parsimonious framework for understanding competing models of tactical voter choice. The typology helps to elucidate the methodological difficulties in studying tactical behavior when faced with heterogeneous explanatory models and suggests the need for both theoretical caution and more precise data instruments in future empirical work.

Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 54-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
Common Opinion ◽  
Open Discussion

The paper contrasts the liberal conception of democracy as the aggregation of individual preferences with the deliberative conception of democracy as a process of open discussion leading to an agreed judgement on policy. Social choice theory has identified problems – the arbitrariness of decision rules, vulnerability to strategic voting – which are often held to undermine democratic ideals. Contrary to common opinion, I argue that deliberative democracy is less vulnerable to these difficulties than liberal democracy. The process of discussion tends to produce sets of policy preferences that are ‘single peaked’; and within a deliberative setting it may be possible to vary the decision rule according to the nature of the issue to be decided.

scholarly journals Sophisticated Sincerity: Voting Over Endogenous Agendas

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 1323-1330 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Austen-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Private Data ◽  
Sincere Voting ◽  
Amendment Procedure

The empirical findings on whether or not legislators vote strategically are mixed. This is at least partly due to the fact that to establish any hypothesis on strategic voting, legislators' preferences need to be known, and these are typically private data. I show that under complete information, if decision making is by the amendment procedure and if the agenda is set endogenously, then sophisticated (strategic) voting over the resulting agenda is observationally equivalent to sincere voting. The voting strategies, however, are sophisticated. This fact has direct implications for empirical work on sophisticated voting.

scholarly journals A welfarist critique of social choice theory: interpersonal comparisons in the theory of voting

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Aki Lehtinen
Keyword(s):  
Social Choice ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Social Choice Theory ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Voting Theory ◽  
Voting Rules ◽  
Philosophical Critique ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
Interpersonal Comparisons ◽  
Normative Evaluation

This paper provides a philosophical critique of social choice theory insofar as it deals with the normative evaluation of voting and voting rules. I will argue that the very method of evaluating voting rules in terms of whether they satisfy various conditions is deeply problematic because introducing strategic behaviour leads to a violation of any condition that makes a difference between voting rules. I also argue that it is legitimate to make interpersonal comparisons of utilities in voting theory. Combining a realistic account of voters’ behaviour with a utilitarian evaluation of the outcomes then leads to the judgment that strategic voting is beneficial. If it is, then Arrow's theorem does not have far-reaching consequences for democracy because one of its conditions is not normatively acceptable.

Agendas and the Control of Political Outcomes

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Ordeshook ◽  
Thomas Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Voting ◽  
Agenda Setter ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Legislative Outcomes

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.

New challenges to image processing posed by cryo-Electron microscopy of single particles

1991 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 422-423
Author(s):  
Joachim Frank
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Phase Contrast ◽  
Particle Orientation ◽  
Single Particles ◽  
Contrast Transfer Function ◽  
Virtual Absence ◽  
Cryo Electron Microscopy ◽  
Spatial Frequencies ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Particle Images

Compared with images of negatively stained single particle specimens, those obtained by cryo-electron microscopy have the following new features: (a) higher “signal” variability due to a higher variability of particle orientation; (b) reduced signal/noise ratio (S/N); (c) virtual absence of low-spatial-frequency information related to elastic scattering, due to the properties of the phase contrast transfer function (PCTF); and (d) reduced resolution due to the efforts of the microscopist to boost the PCTF at low spatial frequencies, in his attempt to obtain recognizable particle images.

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