Farquharson and Fenno: Sophisticated Voting and Home Style

Abstract

This article is aimed at integrating two kinds of analysis of legislators' calculations of advantage. We assume that legislators operate in two arenas, in the legislative arena itself, where their calculations of advantage concern simply their effectiveness in voting (Farquharson), and in the electoral arena, where their calculations concern the rewards for their position-taking as well as their effectiveness (Fenno). Our analysis is introduced by an interpretation of voting on the Powell amendment, 1956, when some legislators apparently voted strategically and others, equally able to do so, still did not. We then develop an expected utility model of voting that accounts for such divergent choices in terms of legislators' individual beliefs about the distribution of opinions in the legislature (Farquharson) and in their constituencies (Fenno). We conclude with an analysis of the Nash equilibria of choices to vote strategically or nonstrategically.