Susceptibility to coalitional strategic sponsoring The case of parliamentary agendas

It usually happens that the alternatives to be voted on in committees are chosen or sponsored by some particularly active committee members. For example, in parliaments, some representatives and some government members are known to be especially active in introducing bills on which the whole committee will later vote. It appears that parliamen- tary agendas--namely amendment and successive elimination voting rules--are vulnerable to strategic behavior by groups of individuals introducing motions which are not their most preferred alternatives. Our aim in this paper is to evaluate how frequently this type of be- havior arises.