Bjorn Erik Rasch and George Tsebelis (eds.): The role of governments in legislative agenda setting

摘要

As the public choice revolution matured and a new analysis of legislatures commenced, investigation into these bodies increased dramatically, and in many directions. Theories of rent-seeking, regulation, logrolling, and congressional dominance emerged, and were but a few of the outcomes of applying a rational choice framework to the public sector. Agenda setting certainly belongs on this list as well. Given the cyclical nature of voting systems (Arrow 1963 and McKelvey 1976) along with voting systems in general necessarily being susceptible to strategy (Gibbard 1973 and Satterthwaite 1975), it is only natural to suspect that the self-interested agenda setter(s) manipulate the voting process so as to put himself in a better position.