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Sincere Versus Sophisticated Voting When Legislators Vote Sequentially

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Abstract

Elsewhere (Groseclose and Milyo, 2010), we examine a game where each legislator has preferences over (i) the resulting policy and (ii) how he or she votes. The latter preferences are especially important when the legislator is not pivotal. We show that when the game follows the normal rules of legislatures - most important, that legislators can change their vote after seeing how their fellow legislators have voted - then the only possible equilibrium is one where all legislators ignore their policy preferences. That is, each legislator votes as if he or she is not pivotal. The result, consistent with empirical studies of Congress, suggests that legislators should tend to vote sincerely, rather than sophisticatedly. In this paper we examine how outcomes change if we change the rules for voting. Namely, instead of a simultaneous game, we consider a game where legislators vote sequentially in a pre-determined order. We show that, opposite to the simultaneous game, an alternative wins if and only if a majority of legislators' policy preferences favor that alternative. Our results suggest that if Congress adopted this change in rules, then sophisticated voting would become frequent instead of rare.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey Milyo & Tim Groseclose, 2011. "Sincere Versus Sophisticated Voting When Legislators Vote Sequentially," Working Papers 1112, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
  • Handle: RePEc:umc:wpaper:1112
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    1. Ladha, Krishna K, 1994. "Coalitions in Congressional Voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 78(1), pages 43-63, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Friedel Bolle, 2022. "Voting with abstention," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 24(1), pages 30-57, February.
    2. Bolle, Friedel, 2019. "When will party whips succeed? Evidence from almost symmetric voting games," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 24-34.
    3. Friedel Bolle & Philipp E. Otto, 2022. "Voting behavior under outside pressure: promoting true majorities with sequential voting?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(4), pages 711-740, May.
    4. Friedel Bolle, 2018. "Simultaneous and sequential voting under general decision rules," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(4), pages 477-488, October.
    5. Torun Dewan & John W Patty, 2018. "Editors’ Introduction to JTP issue 30.4," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(4), pages 385-387, October.

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    Keywords

    Sophisticated Voting;

    JEL classification:

    • A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics

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