Strategy and Sophisticated Voting in the Senate

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Abstract
This paper extends the theory of sophisticated voting to cover situations in which legislators lack complete information about both the agenda and about their colleagues' preferences. The voting on a 1986 U.S. Senate resolution to provide full-time television coverage of Senate proceedings serves as an illustration of the theory, as well as adding to the stock of sophisticated voting cases found in the literature. Our approach makes possible a further empirical and theoretical exploration of the links between voting strategy and other aspects of legislative strategy, including agenda control, persuasion, and delay. In contrast with misgivings found in the recent literature, these connections clarify the relevance of sophisticated voting and strategic agenda manipulation for the empirical analysis of legislative politics.

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