Empirical models of spatial voting allow legislators' locations in a policy or ideological space to be inferred from their roll‐call votes. These are typically random utility models where the features of the utility functions other than the ideal points are assumed rather than estimated. In this article, we first consider a model in which legislators' utility functions are allowed to be a mixture of the two most commonly assumed utility functions: the quadratic function and the Gaussian function assumed by NOMINATE. Across many roll‐call data sets, we find that legislators' utility functions are estimated to be very nearly Gaussian. We then relax the usual assumption that each legislator is equally sensitive to policy change and find that extreme legislators are generally more sensitive to policy change than their more centrally located counterparts. This result suggests that extremists are more ideologically rigid while moderates are more likely to consider influences that arise outside liberal‐conservative conflict. 相似文献
Michael Jabara Carley, 1939. The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), pp.xxv + 321. ISBN 1–56663–252–8. Patrick R. Osborn, Operation Pike. Britain Versus the Soviet Union, 1939–1941 (Westport, CT and London, 2000), pp.xiii + 274. ISBN 0–313–31368–7 Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion. Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), pp.xvi + 408. ISBN 0–300–07792–0. 相似文献
In seeking to understand the variation in asylum grant rates by immigration judges (IJs), we apply a variation of the attitudinal model that we modify by incorporating a cognitive model of decision making, arguing that some pieces of information before IJs are treated objectively while others are treated subjectively. This model allows us to account for informational cues that influence decisions while assessing the impact of national interests and human rights conditions. We find that IJ policy predispositions play a dominant role, and that liberal IJs respond to applicant characteristics differently than conservatives, but also that the law constrains decision making. 相似文献
This paper examines state interest in the nine bases of congressional seat apportionment considered for the House of Representatives as part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. We ask, what if voters preferred apportionments that delivered larger vote shares to their state? We then show that among all states, one basis of apportionment was a weak Condorcet winner, while the others were in a vote cycle. In both chambers of Congress, however, pure majority voting created orderings of the nine bases and a different Condorcet winner. Ironically, Congress did not select either Condorcet winner. Instead, a population-based apportionment was reported out of committee and passed both chambers as a consequence of agenda control and lack of pairwise voting. Our analysis provides an example of how agenda setting with incomplete information unintentionally can produce undesirable outcomes for a legislature.
Policy Sciences - There is a rapidly developing literature on risks that threaten the whole of humanity, or a large part of it. Discussion is increasingly turning to how such risks can be governed.... 相似文献
Fixed statutes and regulations often have variable consequences over time. If left unattended, such drift can severely erode the performance of government as an institution of representation. To better understand the mechanics of policy‐making in a changing world, we develop a positive theory that captures political drift in a dynamic separation‐of‐powers system. We show analytically that a distinctive combination of legislative supermajoritarianism and agency discretion—institutional features that, in isolation, elicit widespread criticism—can effectively ameliorate policies' susceptibility to the vicissitudes of exogenous change. The critical mechanism for governmental accommodation of drift is delegation, which increases all decision makers' well‐being by reducing fluctuations in outcomes. Although the complete smoothing of outcomes is attainable in a separation‐of‐ powers system, we show that this is typically not achieved in equilibrium. The presence of drift provides an opportunity for self‐interested legislators to extract a distributional benefit from their fellow legislators at the expense of overall policymaking efficiency. 相似文献