Spatial Models of Legislative Choice

Two classes of models that reflect how legislators make collective choices have become increasingly sophisticated in the last decade. Structure-induced equilibrium models explain stable outcomes in terms of the structural attributes of the legislature. Recent gametheoretic models offer explanations of some nonobvious regularities in legislative behavior in terms of uncertainty about procedures and differential access to information. The increasing realism and attendant complexity of these models enable them to address interesting substantive questions and to offer theoretical explanations that are subject to empirical verification.