Changes

==Abstract==

Bargaining in legislatures is conducted according to formal rules specifying who may make proposals and how they will be decided. Legislative oucomes depend on those rules and on the structure of the legislature. Althrought the social choice literature provides theories about voting equilibria, it does not endogenize the formation of the agenda on which the voting is based and rarely takes into account the institutional structure found in legislatures. IN our theory members of the legislature act noncooperatively in choosing strategies to serve their own districts, explicitly taking into account the strategies that members adopt in response to the sequential nature of proposal making and voting. The model permits the characterization of a legislative equilibrium reflecting the structure of the legislature and also allows consideration of the choice of elements of that structure in a context in which the standard, institution-free model of social choice yields no equilibrium.

==Key Concepts==

*Open: An amendment may be added and voted on (essentially instead of the motion), or the motion can be moved (to an immediate vote).

*Closed: Motion voted on immediately against the status quo. There are no amendments.

==The Model==

*an amendment rule: Open or Closed

*a voting rule:

There is one (non-negative) unit of benefits to be split among the districts. The members are risk neutral and their utility depends only on the benefits to their district. The game is one of perfect information. Members can not make binding commitments - their strategies must be self-enforcing at all points. There for the solution concept is SPNE.

The model assumes:

*<math>v_i(t,g)\,</math> is the value of sub-game <math>g\,</math>, and <math>\delta v_i(t,g)\,</math> is the continuation value if the legislature moves to sub-game <math>g\,</math>. <math>v_i\,</math> is the ex-ante value at the beginning of the game.

*Voting occurs sequentially and openly, allowing the elimination of weakly dominated strategies.