The basic question is whether there is a notion of chief factor of a connected solvable algebraic group that matches my intuition. A few smaller assertions are sprinkled through the explanation, and the implicit question is if these are correct (are unipotent groups nilpotent, are their chief factors all isomorphic to subgroups of Ga, etc.). 


In J.S. Milne's course notes on the basic theory of algebraic groups, theorem 14.30:


A connected solvable smooth group over a perfect field has a connected unipotent normal subgroup whose quotient is of multiplicative type.


In other words, the derived subgroup is contained in the unipotent radical.


Now, a connected group acts on a group of multiplicative type trivially, by 13.21.


I did not see it mentioned, but I believe unipotent groups are nilpotent in both the group theoretic sense and whatever fancy definition one might cook up for these functors. I think that the lower central factors should be direct products of subgroups of the additive group Ga.


By the Jordan decomposition or 13.13 or 13.15, I think any action of Gm on (Ga)^n is diagonal.


It looks like a connected solvable affine algebraic group over an algebraically closed field has a chief series consisting of subgroups of Ga and Gm, all of which I would describe as being one-dimensional.


The analogy with finite groups takes the unipotent radical to be O\_p(G), the p-core, and so it appears that a finite group of solvable algebraic type always has [G,G] <= O\_p(G), so that not only is G ~~supersolvable~~ nilpotent-by-abelian, it is p-closed and its eccentric chief factors are all for the same prime p. In the algebraic case, the central chief factors would be the subgroups of Gm, and the eccentric chief factors would be the subgroups of Ga.


In other words, connected solvable affine algebraic groups over algebraically closed fields are very dissimilar from finite solvable groups in that the representations they define on their own chief factors are all one-dimensional. More briefly, connected solvable affine algebraic groups over algebraically closed fields are supersolvable.


**Edit:** I think the answer to my question is relatively simple: "supersolvable" is a little tricky to directly generalize, but "nilpotent-by-abelian" is quite easy and true, and still implies that any chief factors will be one-dimensional. In Jim's answer, it appears Borel-Serre-Mostow (at least by the time they are translated into Russian) also considered these groups to be "supersolvable", so the name is reasonable, even if the correct definition is just "nilpotent-by-abelian".



Are all connected solvable affine algebraic groups supersolvable?
Properties of solvable linear algebraic groups have been explored sporadically for over
50 years, with various assumptions on the base field. There seems to be no single
viewpoint about how this subject interacts with finite groups or with general
algebraic groups. But to get perspective it may be helpful to consult older work 
originating with Lie groups (Borel, Mostow, Serre) as well as the long paper by
Platonov, V. P.,
The theory of algebraic linear groups and periodic groups. (Russian)
Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. 30 1966 573--620. This appears in Series 2, Volume 69
of the AMS Translations. For example, in 3.1 a solvable algebraic group is defined
to be "supersolvable" if its finite component group is supersolvable. This may or may not 
be everyone's preferred definition, but given this history one has to be careful about the underlying assumptions when asking new questions about solvable algebraic groups. 


