Earning through learning in legislatures

This inquiry applies Gary Becker’s theoretical notions of general and specific training to the experiential learning that occurs within political institutions, in particular the U.S. Congress. In the process, we isolate economic facets of these legislative experiences that influence the rental-value of human capital derived from congressional training. We identify four factors that structure legislators’ post-elective wages: pre-congressional salary, year of entry, tenure, and variables closely related to general training in Congress—specifically, assignment to powerful legislative committees, acquisition of broad skill packages, investment in expanding skill-set proficiencies, and to a lesser extent, life-cycle driven declines in such investments.     

Negotiation in legislatures over government formation

We question results claiming to extend non-cooperative models of legislative bargaining to the theoretically general and substantively typical case with an arbitrary number of disciplined parties. We identify problems with both the derivation of formal results and empirical evaluation of these. No empirically robust formateur advantage is observed in field data on bargaining over government formation. Given this theoretical and empirical impasse, we reconsider the substantive premises that should form the foundation for any new attempt to model this fundamental political process, arguing that models should be grounded in binding constitutional constraints on the government formation process in parliamentary democracies.     

Committees in legislatures: A property rights perspective

Without the imposition of some institutional structure, a legislature is a non-exclusive resource, and legislators will have a tendency to overuse the resource and reduce its productivity. The committee system is a method for granting property rights over the legislature's agenda by subdividing the agenda and assigning each committee rights over a portion of the agenda. Just as common grazing ground could be more productive if it were subdivided and assigned to individual owners, the legislature is more productive if access to the agenda is subdivided and assigned to committees.Ownership rights to committee assignments are allocated based on seniority because this makes the rights more secure and therefore more valuable to their owners. In the United States Congress, the seniority rule replaced a system in which assignments were made at the discretion of party leaders. In the former system, legislators needed to expend effort to retain their assignments, which diminished their ability to use their assignments productively. Because individuals can use resources more productively if they do not have to be concerned about protecting their ownership interest, the seniority system enables the legislature to be more productive in producing legislation.     

Reputational capital, opportunism, and self-policing in legislatures

This paper examines the question of whether reputational capital can deter opportunistic behavior among legislators preparing to exit the House of Representatives. I create a measure of reputational trustworthiness, based upon pooled samples of constituency opinion derived from the National Election Studies surveys. I then examine the extent to which such reputational good will among constituents deters lame-duck foreign travel by exiting House incumbents within the context of a quasi-experimental research design. The analysis suggests that legislators may be ‘self-policed’ by their reputations for honesty and trustworthiness to the point of discouraging unethical activity. urveys. I then examine the extent to which such s derived from the National Election Studies     

The disadvantaged incumbents: estimating incumbency effects in Indian state legislatures

This paper estimates the incumbency effects using a large dataset on state legislative elections in India during 1975–2003. I use a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) that estimates the causal effect of incumbency by comparing candidates in closely fought elections. I find that there is a significant disadvantage to incumbency in Indian State legislative elections, and the adverse effect of incumbency has increased after 1991. Also, the incumbency disadvantage is higher in states that have lower availability of public goods such as health centers, and lower employment, poverty and per capita income.     

Bargaining in legislatures over private and public goods with endogenous recognition

Public Choice - This paper studies a sequential model of multilateral bargaining under majority rule in which legislators make decisions in both private and public good dimensions via an endogenous...     

Bargaining in legislatures,portfolio allocation,and the electoral costs of governing

What motivates political parties in the legislative arena? Existing legislative bargaining models stress parties’ office and policy motivations. A particularly important question concerns how parties in coalition government agree the distribution of cabinet seats. This article adds to the portfolio allocation literature by suggesting that future electoral considerations affect bargaining over the allocation of cabinet seats in multi-party cabinets. Some parties are penalised by voters for participating in government, increasing the attractiveness of staying in opposition. This ‘cost of governing’ shifts their seat reservation price – the minimum cabinet seats demanded in return for joining the coalition. Results of a randomised survey experiment of Irish legislators support our expectation, demonstrating that political elites are sensitive to future electoral losses when contemplating the distribution of cabinet seats. This research advances our understanding of how parties’ behaviour between elections is influenced by anticipation of voters’ reactions.     

The eclipse of legislatures: Direct democracy in the 21st century

Demographic, political, and technological trends are fueling an unprecedented growth in direct democracy worldwide. If the trends continue, direct democracy threatens to eclipse legislatures in setting the policy agenda. This article reviews existing scientific knowledge about the initiative and referendum – the main institutions of direct democracy – and highlights key issues for the future.     

Domestic legislatures and international human rights law: Legislating on religious symbols in Europe

This article examines the dynamics of domestic legislatures' application of international human rights law. Specifically, this article asks the following: What factors shape how domestic legislatures apply international human rights law while they enact national law and policy? Lawmakers have a variety of motives for invoking and deliberating international law. Given these motives, the article identifies two factors — civil society actors and legal experts and the flexibility of international law — that are likely to contribute to if and how national legislatures interpret and apply international human rights law while legislating. These factors are examined through case studies on religion in schools in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. This article argues civil society actors and legal experts and the flexibility of international law inform lawmakers' estimation of political costs related to compliance and thus how they apply international human rights law to domestic legislation.     

The economic organization of legislatures and how it affects congressional voting

Congress confronts two major organizational problems that affect the behavior of legislators, party leaders, and groups doing business with congressional committees: The costly nature of monitoring and the absence of explicit mechanisms for upholding agreements. The problem of monitoring implies that party leaders will have a difficult time influencing decisions made in decision-making arenas where the actions of legislators are less visible, as in congressional committees. While legislators can evade leadership monitoring of their actions within committees, once an issue leaves a committee, the costs of monitoring decline, and leadership influence increases. The absence of mechanisms for assuring that legislators keep their bargains means that groups will place an emphasis on dealing with reliable legislators — those who can be counted upon to uphold their end of a bargain. Thus, party leaders are more effective in influencing floor voting because of their better ability to monitor legislator behavior; however, obligations to important interest groups will be more immune to leadership influence because of the incentives for committee members to adhere to their bargains.     

Get in line: Do part-time legislatures use sunset laws to keep executive agencies in check

Sunset provisions are clauses embedded in legislation that cause a piece of legislation or a regulatory board to expire on a certain date unless the legislature takes affirmative action to renew the legislation or board. Supporters and legislators offer several reasons why sunset laws are valuable and useful. An article by Baugus and Bose (2015), reported on the king-and-council model of Congleton (2001), suggests that sunset laws are a key tool legislatures use in asserting themselves against an executive branch that often dominates state government. We investigate this possibility using empirical analysis, which suggests that part-time legislatures, specifically, a form of part-time legislature referred to as hybrid legislatures, are more prone to use sunset legislation as a tool to keep the executive preferences in check.     

Executive capacity to control legislatures and presidential choice of cabinet ministers in East Asian democracies

How do presidents in new democracies choose cabinet ministers to accomplish their policy goals? Contrary to existing studies explaining the partisan composition of the cabinet with institutional characteristics, such as formal authority, we argue that the broader political context surrounding the president's ability to control the legislature can affect cabinet partisanship. By analyzing original data on cabinet formation in all presidential systems in East Asia since democratization, we find that when presidents are more likely to be dominant in executive–legislative relations, they have less concern about legislative support and more leeway to focus on policy performance by appointing nonpartisan cabinet members. This analysis suggests that understanding cabinet partisanship requires a view of cabinet appointments as a trade‐off between securing legislative support and managing policy performance, and the scope of this compromise depends on the strength of the president vis‐à‐vis the legislature.     

Committee bias in legislatures with a high degree of party cohesion: Evidence from Danish municipalities

The institution of committees in democratic legislatures has for years been said to bias policy making because the preferences of committee members differ from, and are more alike than, those of other legislators due to self‐selection to the committees. Based on an analysis of United States Senate committees, Hall and Grofman suggested in 1990 that the preferences of committee members primarily diverge from, and are more alike than, those of non‐committee members on policy issues that are salient to constituencies or at least to an easily definable segment of constituencies. This article argues that the logic of Hall and Grofman should in fact be reversed in legislatures characterised by highly cohesive parties. Accordingly, the main hypothesis is that in such legislatures the preferences of committee members are more likely to be alike than those of non‐committee members in the committees that work with policy issues of less salience to constituencies. Using a large‐scale comparative design comprising data collected in 2008 on the spending preferences of 1,348 Danish local politicians, evidence is found supporting this hypothesis. This finding points to the importance of considering the role of parties when assessing committee bias.     

The analysis of Scottish Parliament committee influence: Beyond capacity and structure in comparing West European legislatures

Abstract.  The Scottish Parliament was set up in the hope that strong committees would foster consensus, with an emphasis on reducing partisanship and adopting a pragmatic approach to the detailed study of draft legislation. However, few empirical studies exist that assess the value of the committee process. This flaw is common within the West European literature. The comparative literature on legislative influence is lacking in detailed empirical studies (in part because of the dominant assumption within the literature that parliaments are peripheral to the policy process). Most studies provide impressionistic discussions of the capacities of committees and the constraints to their effectiveness. They do not follow this through with an analysis of committee 'outputs'. This study of the amendments process in the Scottish Parliament addresses the gap. It uses data from a four-year study of legislative amendments to develop indicators of parliamentary outputs. While the results confirm that the committee system operates at the heart of the 'new politics' in Scotland, further such individual country studies are necessary to supplement much broader comparative analyses.     

Welfare policymaking and intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender in U.S. state legislatures

Welfare policy in the American states has been shaped profoundly by race, ethnicity, and representation. Does gender matter as well? Focusing on state welfare reform in the mid‐1990s, we test hypotheses derived from two alternative approaches to incorporating gender into the study of representation and welfare policymaking. An additive approach, which assumes gender and race/ethnicity are distinct and independent, suggests that female state legislators—regardless of race/ethnicity—will mitigate the more restrictive and punitive aspects of welfare reform, much like their African American and Latino counterparts do. In contrast, an intersectional approach, which highlights the overlapping and interdependent nature of gender and race/ethnicity, suggests that legislative women of color will have the strongest countervailing effect on state welfare reform—stronger than that of other women or men of color. Our empirical analyses suggest an intersectional approach yields a more accurate understanding of gender, race/ethnicity, and welfare politics in the states.     

Representation beyond people: Lobbying access of umbrella associations to legislatures and the media

Lobbying access to policy discussions determines how political interests are voiced and potentially exert influence. This article addresses whether access to the national legislature and the media favors umbrella organizations, which represent interests of their member groups. It theorizes that the role of umbrellas goes beyond signaling a large individual membership or constituency of people, but that umbrellas are distinct in transmitting interests from other organizations. This function is expected to be valuable in exchanges with legislators who seek efficiency, input legitimacy, and policy implementation, but less valuable in the media arena. Using a new data set on lobbying by 286 groups on 12 issues in the United Kingdom and Germany, the article serves support for this theory: Umbrellas enjoy higher legislative access, but lower media access than groups without member organizations, irrespective of their individual membership or claimed constituency. The findings have implications for how we understand and study political representation.     

The distribution of honoraria income in the U.S. Congress: Who gets rents in legislatures and why?

The major conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that low-cost suppliers of political favors receive the highest honoraria incomes. There is no evidence that being a lawyer, acquiring a large number of committee assignments, receiving high ratings by labor unions, representing a safe district, or introducing numerous legislative bills, increases one's honoraria income in any significant way. The wider dispersal of power reduces the effects of seniority, and membership on the Finance Committee, in determining institutional power in the Senate; hence, these variables are only significantly related to honoraria income in the House. The smaller the number of suppliers in the Senate, relative to the House, means that senators obtain higher prices for their services. As a result, business groups are more willing to pay extra — a price premium — to assure that no shirking occurs.While the distribution of honoraria has caused considerable concern and given rise to cynical explanations as to who gets them and why (see, for example, McChesney, 1987), this analysis suggests a less pejorative but empirically valid conclusion: business, and therefore honoraria, gravitate to those who can supply political favors at a lower cost than other legislators, just as low-cost suppliers gain a greater proportion of the sales in the market than those who supply the same service but at a higher price.     

Formal human capital attainment of career legislators in the U.S. Congress: Modeling legislatures as unions

The present paper employs a human capital modelthat examines, among other things, the educationalattainment of career politicians/legislators. Statistical evidence is presented which suggests thatthe formal educational levels differ systematicallybetween career and non-career politicians/legislatorsat the federal level (i.e., in the U.S. Congress) –a result consistent with the implications of thelegislative pay union model developed by McCormick andTollison (1978). Any adverse selection consequencesare potentially significant regarding the quality offederal legislation and the social cost of governmentactivities.