Sophisticated Voting in Congress: A Reconsideration

Abstract

A recent development in the theory of voting is the possibility that agendas over which legislators may engage in sophisticated voting can place legislators in awkward situations. Consequently, some legislators may choose not to vote sophisticatedly. Roll-call votes on the school construction bill of 1956 are cited as support for this "position-taking" hypothesis (Denzau, Riker, and Shepsle 1985). This article questions the relevance of classical sophisticated voting theory in general and the position-taking extension in particular. First, the body of rules and precedents in the U.S. Congress make it easy to avoid opportunities for sophisticated voting. Second, when rare cases arise in which agendas do permit identifiable sophisticated voting, uncertainty makes the application of perfect-information theory inappropriate. Reconsideration of some heretofore overlooked procedural facts surrounding the school aid bill, as well as its distributive content, yields an alternative approach: characterization of the situation as a game with incomplete information and extraction of hypotheses that are testable without employing the ad hoc assumptions required in previous accounts. Empirical analysis supports our model, accentuates the limitations of previous voting theory, and illustrates the interplay of information and procedure in legislative politics.