Four pure types of legislative organization are characterized as data generating processes for commonly used measures of preferences or, in the spatial vernacular, ideal points. The types of legislative organization are differentiated by their partisan versus nonpartisan nature of agenda...

Collective choice bodies throughout the world use a diverse array of codified rules that determine who may exercise procedural rights, and in what order. This paper analyzes several two-stage decision-making models, focusing on one in which the first-moving actor has a unique, unilateral,...

A three-stage model isolates conditions under which an executive appointment to a collective choice body, such as a court or a regulatory agency, has an immediate bearing on policy. The model strikes a balance between previous formal models that predict either excessive gridlock or excessive...

Credible tests of hypotheses about power require credible measures of power. Roll rates purport to measure the relative power of the parties in legislatures. This article develops and employs a baseline model to assess roll rates. Although on the surface roll rates have some intuitively...