Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T18:30:37.093Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parties, Coalitions, and the Internal Organization of Legislatures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2011

DANIEL DIERMEIER  and
RAZVAN VLAICU
DANIEL DIERMEIER*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
RAZVAN VLAICU*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
*
Daniel Diermeier is IBM Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practice, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and Director of the Ford Center for Global Citizenship, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 (d-diermeier@kellogg.northwestern.edu).
Razvan Vlaicu is Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and Affiliate, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, 3105 Tydings Hall, College Park, MD 20742 (vlaicu@econ.umd.edu.).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We present a theory of parties-in-legislatures that can generate partisan policy outcomes despite the absence of any party-imposed voting discipline. Legislators choose all procedures and policies through majority-rule bargaining and cannot commit to vote against their preferences on either. Yet, off-median policy bias occurs in equilibrium because a majority of legislators with correlated preferences has policy-driven incentives to adopt partisan agenda-setting rules—as a consequence, bills reach the floor disproportionately from one side of the ideological spectrum. The model recovers, as special cases, the claims of both partisan and nonpartisan theories in the ongoing debate over the nature of party influence in the U.S. Congress. We show that (1) party influence increases in polarization, and (2) the legislative median controls policy making only when there are no bargaining frictions and no polarization. We discuss the implications of our findings for the theoretical and empirical study of legislatures.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 105 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 359 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aldrich, J. H. 1995. Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, J. H. and Rohde, D. W.. 2001. “The Logic of Conditional Party Government.” In Congress Reconsidered, eds. Dodd, L. C. and Oppenheimer, B. I.. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 269–92.Google Scholar
Austen-Smith, D. and Banks, J.. 2000. Positive Political Theory I: Collective Preference. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Banks, J. and Duggan, J.. 2000. “A Bargaining Model of Collective Choice.” American Political Science Review 94: 73–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banks, J. and Duggan, J.. 2006. “A Bargaining Model of Legislative Policy-making.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1: 49–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, D. and Ferejohn, J. A.. 1989. “Bargaining in Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 83 (4): 1181–1206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, D. and Ferejohn, J. A.. 1989. “The Power to Propose.” In Models of Strategic Choice in Politics, ed. Ordeshook, Peter C.. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 343–66.Google Scholar
Cardona, D. and Ponsati, C.. 2010. “Uniqueness of Stationary Equilibria in Bargaining One-dimensional Policies under (Super) Majority Rules.” Institut d'Analisi Economica. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Cooper, J. and Brady, D. W.. 1981. “Institutional Context and Leadership Style: The House from Cannon to Rayburn.” American Political Science Review 75: 411–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, G. W. 2006. “The Organization of Democratic Legislatures.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, eds. Weingast, B. and Wittman, D.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 141–61.Google Scholar
Cox, G. W. and McCubbins, M. D.. 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cox, G. W. and McCubbins, M. D.. 2005. Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, G. W. and Poole, K. T.. 2002. “On Measuring Partisanship in Roll-Call Voting: The U.S. House of Representatives, 1877–1999.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (3): 477–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diermeier, D. 1995. “Commitment, Deference, and Legislative Institutions.” American Political Science Review 89 (2): 344–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diermeier, D. and Feddersen, T.. 1998. “Cohesion in Legislatures and the Vote of Confidence Procedure.” American Political Science Review 92 (3): 611–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diermeier, D. and Myerson, R. B.. 1999. “Bicameralism and Its Consequences for the Internal Organization of Legislatures.” American Economic Review 89 (5): 1182–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diermeier, D. and Vlaicu, R.. 2009. “Self-organizing Legislatures: Policymaking under Procedural Endogeneity.” University of Maryland. Working paper.Google Scholar
Diermeier, D. and Vlaicu, R.. N.d. “Executive Control and Legislative Success.” Review of Economic Studies. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Dion, D. and Huber, J.. 1996. “Procedural Choice and the House Commitee on Rules.” Journal of Politics 58 (1): 25–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gailmard, S. and Jenkins, J.. 2007. “Negative Agenda Control in the Senate and House of Representatives: Fingerprints of Majority Party Power.” Journal of Politics 69 (3): 689–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilligan, T. W. and Krehbiel, K.. 1987. “Collective Decision-making and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures.” Journal of Law Economics and Organization 3 (2): 287–335.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, K. 1991. Information and Legislative Organization. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K. 1993. “Where's the Party?” British Journal of Political Science 23: 235–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K. 1995. “Cosponsors and Wafflers from A to Z.” American Journal of Political Science 39: 906–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K. 1998. Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K. 2004. “Legislative Organization.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 18 (1): 113–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, K. 2006a. “Pivots.” In Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, eds. Weingast, B. and Witman, D., Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press, 223–40.Google Scholar
Krehbiel, K. 2006b. “Partisan Roll Rates in a Nonpartisan Legislature.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 23 (1): 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laver, M. and Shepsle, K. A.. 1996. Making and Breaking Governments: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, E., Maltzman, F., and Smith, S. S.. 2006. “Who Wins? Party Effects in Legislative Voting.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 31 (1): 33–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, D. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McCarty, N., Poole, K. T., and Rosenthal, H.. 2001. “The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress.” American Political Science Review 95 (3): 673–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oleszek, W. 2007. Congressional Procedures and the Policy Process. 7th ed. CQ Press.Google Scholar
Patty, J. 2007. “The House Discharge Procedure and Majoritarian Politics.” Journal of Politics 69 (3): 678–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patty, J. 2008. “Equilibrium Party Government.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (3): 636–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohde, D. W. 1991. Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohde, D. W., Stiglitz, E., and Weingast, B.. 2008. “Parties, Committees, and Pivots: A Reassessment of the Literature on Congressional Organization.” Presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting, Boston.Google Scholar
Schickler, E. and Pearson, K.. 2009. “Agenda Control, Majority Party Power, and the House Committee on Rules, 1939–65.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 34 (4): 455–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepsle, K. and Weingast, B.. 1981. “Structure-induced Equilibrium and Legislative Choice.” Public Choice 37 (3): 503–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. S. 2007. Party Influence in Congress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, J. M. and Groseclose, T.. 2000. “Estimating Party Influence in Congressional Roll-call Voting.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (2): 187–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, J. M. and Ting, M. M.. 2002. “An Informational Rationale for Political Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (1): 90–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, J. M., Ting, M. M., and Ansolabehere, S.. 2005. “Legislative Bargaining under Weighted Voting.” American Economic Review 95 (4): 981–1004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, C. 2001. Analyzing Congress. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Sundaram, R. 1996. A First Course in Optimization Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volden, C. and Bergman, E.. 2006. “How Strong Should Our Party Be? Party Member Preferences Over Party Cohesion.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 31 (1): 71–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weingast, B. and Marshall, W.. 1988. “The Industrial Organization of Congress: Or, Why Legislatures, Like Firms, Are Not Organized as Markets.” Journal of Political Economy 96: 132–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woon, J. 2008. “Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals.” Journal of Politics 70 (1): 201–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.