Endogenous agendas and seniority advantage

Abstract

We study a legislative assembly that chooses its agenda protocol endogenously. We generalize McKelvey and Riezman’s (1992) seminal theory on seniority in legislatures, by allowing for a large class of ordinal agenda rules that assign different recognition probability to each legislator. We consider two stages — the selection of agenda rules, and the decision making that transpires under them. We predict that the agenda rules chosen in equilibrium preserve seniority distinctions, disproportionately favor more senior legislators, and generate an incumbency advantage to all legislators.