Competing Agendas: Comparing Observed Roll Rates to a Hypothetical Baseline.

Much has been written about roll rates in the recent literature on congressional organization. A roll is a roll call vote on which a member or coalition of members votes against a legislative provision that nevertheless passes. A roll rate is then constructed by finding the proportion of rolls among some sample of roll call votes of interest. The debate over roll rates regards the utility of roll rates as a measure of party effects. This paper argues that roll rates used to test for party effects in this way posit alternative possible legislative agendas, and that evidence for party effects uncovered by roll rates analysis must be compared to baseline roll rates produced through "nonpartisan" means. This paper uses simulation techniques to produce such baseline roll rates, using a simple decision rule and a variety of measures of legislators' preferences, and compares these baseline roll rates to the observed roll rates produced by the actual agenda of the House of Representatives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]