The Strategy of Recorded Voting in the European Parliament

What are the effects of roll call requests on voting behaviour, coalition formation and voting outcomes in the European Parliament (EP)? The standard approach for addressing such strategic questions empirically in the context of EU legislative politics is to derive comparative statics given an appropriate solution concept such as Nash equilibrium and subject these implications to empirical tests . In contrast, we rely upon Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE), a solution concept that allows for the possibility that actors may make mistakes. We apply this logic to roll-call vote requests in the EP to investigate why political groups make roll call requests, and how,  and to what extent they take into account their expectations of what other political groups will do when deciding whether or not to request a roll call on a particular vote.

• Number of placements available: 1 or 2 per semester.