Investigating the Incidence of Killer Amendments in Congress

Jenkins, Jeffery A.; Munger, Michael C.

doi:10.1111/1468-2508.t01-3-00012

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Members may have a combination of goals that includes both reelection and policy seeking (Fenno 1973), but those goals may sometimes conflict, as is the case with killer amendments (Denzau, Riker, and Shepsle 1985;Jenkins and Munger 2003). Under what conditions does this tension between goals exist, and when it does, how should we expect it to be resolved?…”

Section: Goals Agenda Positions Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Woon

2008

The Journal of Politics

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Positions of influence over the legislative agenda provide greater opportunities for shaping policy outcomes. Do legislators take advantage of this? If they do, when the median is pivotal and legislators' goals reflect both position taking and policy seeking, greater influence over the agenda leads legislators to moderate their bills relative to legislators with lower agenda priority. Analysis of a formal game theoretic model provides rigorous justification for the proposition, and empirical analysis of House and Senate bills from the 101st to 108th Congresses using cosponsorship data to measure the ideological locations of bills largely supports it. Committee leadership and majority party status have moderating effects while the effect of committee membership is slight. The analysis also tentatively supports the pivotalness of the median over other alternatives. Contrary to the view that bill sponsorship is mere position taking, legislative organization significantly shapes early-stage legislative behavior. Specifically, greater legislative influence implies greater responsiveness to the median legislator.

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Section: Goals Agenda Positions Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Woon

2008

The Journal of Politics

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“…14. See Hug (2010) Jenkins and Munger (2003), Ladha (1994), Leemann (2009), Rasch (2014) and Wilkerson (1999) for different attempts to identify possible votes with strategic voting. 18.…”

Section: Note On Authorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic Behaviour in Parliament

Bütikofer¹,

Hug²

2015

The Journal of Legislative Studies

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675-689) started to assess how knowledge about the sequence of votes may help us to understand the legislative process in more detail. Many of these analyses are, however, predicated on quite important assumptions regarding the forward-looking capacities of MPs. In this paper, this more recent literature is drawn on and brought to bear on an analysis of two bills adopted in the Swiss parliament. Having detailed information available on MPs' preferences over various options voted upon, it is possible to test whether MPs behave strategically, and to what degree they are capable of anticipating the way forward through the agenda tree. Evidence is found that MPs behave strategically, but their foresight is not as perfect as one would expect from theoretical models.

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“…The prevalence of strategic voting is a topic of continuing interest to scholars who analyze roll calls, but it is typically studied at the agenda stage rather than at the legislator level (e.g., Jenkins & Munger 2003, Groseclose & Milyo 2010. The prospect of strategic voting by legislators is obviously consequential because it means that scholars must again consider whether the sincere, strategic, or pooled ideal points are most relevant for the question and model of interest.…”

Section: Do Legislators Behave Uniformly?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Roll Call Estimates to Test Models of Politics

Clinton

2012

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci.

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Measuring the preferences of political elites is critically important for analyzing the determinants and consequences of elite behavior. The decisions that elites make when casting roll call votes seem to provide an ideal opportunity for measuring elite preferences and testing theories of the political process. The fact that the resulting ideal points are a consequence of applying a statistical model to a model of individual choice, however, may affect their usefulness for measuring elite preferences and testing predictions regarding individual and collective decision making. When analyzing roll call votes, scholars should be mindful of how their decisions may affect the estimates from their analyses. I use simulations to illustrate how the nonrandom selection of roll calls may affect the ability to estimate ideal points that accurately reflect the preferences responsible for generating the observed votes, and I discuss work integrating the many models involved in the production and consumption of roll call estimates.

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Investigating the Incidence of Killer Amendments in Congress

Cited by 33 publications

References 32 publications

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Strategic Behaviour in Parliament

Using Roll Call Estimates to Test Models of Politics

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