'Descended from immigrants and revolutionists': how family immigration history shapes representation in Congress

Does recent immigrant lineage influence the legislative behavior of members of Congress on immigration policy? We examine the relationship between the immigrant background of legislators (i.e., their generational distance from immigration) and legislative behavior, focusing on roll-call votes for landmark immigration legislation and congressional speech on the floor. Legislators more proximate to the immigrant experience tend to support more permissive immigration legislation. Legislators with recent immigration backgrounds also speak more often about immigration in Congress, though the size of immigrant constituencies in their districts accounts for a larger share of this effect. A regression discontinuity design on close elections, which addresses selection bias concerns and holds district composition constant, confirms that legislators with recent immigrant backgrounds tend to support pro-immigration legislation. Finally, we demonstrate how a common immigrant identity can break down along narrower ethnic lines in cases where restrictive legislation targets specific places of origin. Our findings illustrate the important role of immigrant identity in legislative behavior and help illuminate the legislative dynamics of present-day immigration policy.Accepted manuscrip

Representation of women in the parliament of the Weimar republic: Evidence from roll call votes

This is the post-print version of the article which has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input in Politics and Gender. Copyright @ Cambridge University Press.In modern democracies, the representation of voter interests and preferences is primarily the job of political parties and their elected officials. These patterns can however change when issues are at stake that concern the interests of social groups represented by all relevant parties of a political system. In this article we focus on the behavior of female MPs in the parliament of Weimar Germany and, thus, in a parliament where legislative party discipline was very high. On the basis of a dataset containing information on the legislative voting behavior of MPs, we show that gender, even when controlling for a battery of further theoretically derived explanatory factors, had a decisive impact on the MPs’ voting behavior on a law proposal to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.Zukunftskolleg (University of Konstanz) and the German Research Foundatio

Legislative Delegation and Two Conceptions of the Legislative Power

[Excerpt] The current federal government, with its burgeoning administrative agencies, does not embody what most Americans would recognize as the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. This is, in part, due to the Congress’s frequent practice of delegating legislative powers to the executive branch, i.e., giving administrative agencies the power to promulgate rules regulating private behavior and having the force of law. Legislative delegation has been the subject of academic, legal, and political wrangling since the early congresses and clearly calls into question whether modern practice adheres to constitutional norms. This article discusses legislative delegation in terms of some core ideas that informed the writing and ratification of the Constitution, and then look at debates on legislative delegation from the early republic, the Progressive era, and modern times. Ultimately, this article argues that the no delegation doctrine – that legislative power cannot be delegated to the executive consistently with the Constitution – should be viewed as an important protector of constitutional values whose judicial enforcement is both desirable and practicable. In Part II, I discuss how the change in the conception of law and legislative power over the eighteenth century ought to influence how one appraises the propriety of legislative delegation. In Part III, I consider important debates over delegation occurring at critical moments in the history of delegation. Instead of focusing on the relatively familiar historical narrative of Supreme Court cases, I concentrate on the unchanging themes underlying arguments about delegation. In Part IV, I consider the main point of contention in modern discussions of delegation, namely judicial review, and evaluate assertions regarding its practicability and clarity

Political Ambition and Legislative Behavior in the European Parliament

Members of the European Parliament (MEP) typically follow one of two career paths, either advancing within the European Parliament itself or returning to higher office in their home states. We argue that these different ambitions condition legislative behavior. Specifically, MEPs seeking domestic careers defect from group-leadership votes more frequently and oppose legislation that expands the purview of supranational institutions. We show how individual, domestic-party, and national level variables shape the careers available to MEPs and, in turn, their voting choices. To test the argument, we analyze MEPs' roll-call voting behavior in the 5th session of the EP (1999-2004) using a random effects model that captures idiosyncrasies in voting behavior across both individual MEPs and specific roll-call votes.published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Bargaining in Legislatures: An Empirical Investigation

While the theoretical literature on non-cooperative legislative bargaining has grown voluminous, there is little empirical work attempting to test a key prediction in this literature: proposal power is valuable. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the role of proposal power in the allocation of transportation projects across U.S. Congressional districts in 1991 and 1998. The evidence supports the key qualitative prediction of the Baron and Ferejohn legislative bargaining model: members with proposal power, those sitting on the transportation authorization committee, secure more project spending for their districts than do other representatives. Support for the quantitative restrictions on the value of proposal power, which are more powerful than the qualitative restrictions, is more mixed. I then empirically address several alternative models of legislative behavior, including partisian models, informational roles for committees, models with appropriations committees, and theories of committees as preference outliers.

Fact Finding Trips to Italy: An experimental investigation of voter incentives

This paper addresses the interaction of voter information and seniority on electoral accountability. We test whether information leads voters to be less tolerant of moral hazard in a legislative system favoring seniority. A simple game theoretic model is used to predict outcomes in a pork-barrel experiment where subjects act as legislators and voters. Senior legislators have an advantage in providing transfers which presents the opportunity to shirk where legislators can enrich themselves at the expense of voters. Voter information about incumbent behavior is varied across experimental treatments. We find that accountability increases when voters can compare their own legislator’s behavior to the behavior of others. Despite the fact that voters succumb to the incentives of seniority, information is effective in deterring legislator shirking.voting, experiments, information, principal-agent problem

PENGARUH PENDAPATAN ASLI DAERAH, SISA LEBIH PERHITUNGAN ANGGARAN DAN DANA ALOKASI UMUM TERHADAP PERILAKU OPORTUNISTIK PENYUSUN ANGGARAN (Studi Kasus Kabupaten/Kota di Provinsi Jawa Tengah)

The Application of the Local Autonomy Program in Indonesia based on Law No. 22/1999 about Local Government gives an opportunity to the application of agency theory in local budgeting. This theory addresses a relationship between local government, the People Representative Board at local level (DPRD), and people (voters). Voters Legislative is principle for legislative. The information asymmetry between executive and legislative in the local budget allocation, especially when there is a change of the Estimate Income of Regional Expense (APBD) has no meaning when the legislative uses its discretionary power as the consequence of Law No 22/1999 so that the executive is difficult to refuse the legislative recommendation to allocate the budged as its preference. The revision of Law No. 2/1999 into Law No. 32/2004 about Local Government actually endeavors to reduce the legislative opportunistic behavior. This study is aimed to examine and analyze the influence of PAD towards the opportunistic behavior of budget requestor in all the regions/cities of the Central Java, to examine and analyze the influence of SiLPA towards the opportunistic behavior budget requestor in all the regions/cities of the Central Java, to examine and analyze the effect of DAU towards the opportunistic behavior budget requestor in the Central Java Provincial Government. The data which is used is the secondary data obtained from Regional Secretariat of Central Java Province. The population in this study is all the regions/cities in Central Java of the research period 2008 – 2010. The sampling technique in this study uses purposive sampling method. Based on the criteria, the samples which are used are 33 Regencies/cities. The instrument used is multiple regression method. The result of the study shows that the Local Revenue (PAD) and General Allocation Fund (DAU) have significantly positive influence toward the opportunistic behavior of the budget requestor in the Central Java Provincial Government. SiLPA has significantly negative influence towards the opportunistic behavior of the budget requestor in the Central Java Provincial Government

The effects of legislative change on female labour supply : marriage and divorce, child and spousal support, property division and pension splitting

Although there has been a considerable amount of legislation aimed at marital rights in several countries in recent decades, the implications for women's labor supply has been a comparatively neglected area. In this report, the authors use insights from the economics of marriage , including bargaining theories, to examine the labor-market impact of legislation covering marital and post-marital support obligations, which include child support and pension splitting. The focus will be on generic forms of such legislative change with illustrations drawn from recent UK legislative change. The approach is drawn from the economics of law (Posner [1992a]). The report is structured as follows: The authors examine the economic theory of marriage, focusing on individual-bargaining theoretical approaches. Tosome extent, the resulting behavior indicated by individual bargaining models of marriage can be fitted into standard labor-market modeling of labor supply decisions. The report then examines policy towards alimony, child support, property division, and pension splitting. The topics are chosen to reflect important current trends in marital law in developed countries that seem likely to spread towards developing countries.Gender and Law,Population&Development,Environmental Economics&Policies,Gender and Law,Education and Society

Beyond contested elections: the processes of bill creation and the fulfillment of democracy's promises

Long before 1996, earlier promises of 'development' had splintered into a million shards. Development -- defined as the use of state power to bring about social, political, and economic change in favor of the mass of the population almost everywhere had seemingly imploded. 5 Babies in the poorer countries could expect to live from ten to thirty years fewer than those born in industrialized countries. [TRUNCATED

State of the Art in Fair ML: From Moral Philosophy and Legislation to Fair Classifiers

Machine learning is becoming an ever present part in our lives as many decisions, e.g. to lend a credit, are no longer made by humans but by machine learning algorithms. However those decisions are often unfair and discriminating individuals belonging to protected groups based on race or gender. With the recent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into effect, new awareness has been raised for such issues and with computer scientists having such a large impact on peoples lives it is necessary that actions are taken to discover and prevent discrimination. This work aims to give an introduction into discrimination, legislative foundations to counter it and strategies to detect and prevent machine learning algorithms from showing such behavior