Sophisticated Committees and Structure-Induced Equilibria in Congress

This article addresses the somewhat narrower topic of whether a theory of legislatures a la Shepsle, can usefully and intelligibly accommodate the diversity in real-world legislatures, and whether in doing so it can retain its ability to predict political outcomes. I argue that Shepsle's theory is indeed useful for understanding Congress, in spite of its various limitations and simplifications, some of which are defended and others of which are corrected, Ultimately, I show how a proposed theoretical extension, while abstract, nevertheless says something concrete about how the institutionalization in Congress can stabilize congressional outcomes. The essay begins with a nontechnical review of Shepsle's theory and its main result, and proceeds to extend the theory to situations in which committees are more attentive and responsive to the preferences of noncommittee members. New theoretical results are presented for "simple institutional arrangements" (SIAs} with sophisticated committees, and Fenno's House committees and Polsby's comments on institutionalization are reconsidered in light of the revised theory

A Rationale for Restrictive Rules

Congressmen often claim to dislike restrictions on their opportunities to offer amendments to legislation in the Committee of the Whole. Yet restrictive rules of various forms not only are quite common but often are voted into existence explicitly or implicitly. Whenever a modified closed rule from the Rules Committee receives a majority vote, members explicitly accept the restrictions that such rules place on amendments. Whenever a bill is passed under suspension of the rules, the requisite two-thirds vote is an implicit acceptance of restrictions, because the vote has the effect of not only passing the legislation, but passing it unamended. The frequency with which such procedures are used in the House of Representatives suggests that restrictions on the ability to amend are not abhorred after all. Thus the question: why do members of a democratic and decentralized legislature tolerate, indeed choose, restrictive rules? This paper ad dresses the question with a simple theoretical model based on a large class of empirical situations. The central argument is that restrictive rules are effective institutional devices for congressmen to initiate and maintain pareto optimal outcomes in areas of policy where, in the absence of such rules, initiation and maintenance of policies would be difficult

Sophistication, Myopia, and the Theory of Legislatures: An Experimental Study

Legislatures typically make decisions in stages: for example, first by subsets of members (in committees) and then by the full membership (on the floor). But different theories of two-stage decision-making employ different assumptions about the degree of foresight committee members exercise during the first stage. This paper reviews the relevant theories and reports on several experiments that test whether committees acting in a larger legislature make decisions consistent with the hypotheses of sophisticated or myopic behavior. Under diverse conditions--including open and closed rules, and homogeneous and heterogeneous preferences—the predictions of sophisticated behavior are superior not only to those of myopic behavior, but also to several other competing hypotheses. Implications of the findings for future theoretical developments are discussed, as are reservations regarding generalizing about real-world legislatures on the basis of laboratory observations

A Technique for Estimating Legislators' Ideal Points on Concrete Policy Dimensions

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Obstruction, Germaneness and Representativeness in Legislatures

Obstruction has often been regarded as an abhorrent feature of American legislatures, but few attempts have been made to specify the conditions under which it occurs or the precise nature and degree of its putative evil. This paper presents a theory of decentralized decision-making that specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for sophisticated obstruction by committees. The assumptions of the theory are embedded in a simulation model which generates preferences and status quo points, identifies outcomes under competing behavioral assumptions, and estimates the representativeness of outcomes as a function of legislators' ideal points. The results call for rejection of the hypothesis that obstruction leads to unrepresentative outcomes. A discussion of the House's discharge petition examines the findings in a richer congressional context

Unanimous Consent Agreements: Going along in the Senate

In recent decades the U. S. Senate has made increasing use of complex unanimous consent agreements (UCAs) to set a time for a final vote on legislation (thereby precluding filibusters) and to specify, for example, who may offer what amendments. Because of the numerous dilatory tactics permitted in the absence of a UCA, controversial legislation is typically doomed unless a prior agreement has been reached. Thus the norm of consent to unanimous consent requests (UCRs) is puzzling. This paper addresses the puzzle with a decision-theoretic model of consent which yields what appears to be a rather stringent condition for objection to a UCR. Two actual cases of objection are analyzed and seem quite consistent with comparative statics results derived from the model. A concluding discussion considers UCAs as instances of endogenously chosen institutions which provide Senate leaders with opportunities to induce cooperative behavior

Congressional Roll Call Voting Strategies: Application of a New Test to Minimum Wage Legislation

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The Analysis of Committee Power: An Application to Senate Voting on the Minimum Wage

A widely noted empirical regularity of congressional behavior is that standing committees exert disproportionate influence on congressional choices. The observed phenomenon has a number of labels-committee influence, committee power, and (from the parent chamber's perspective) deference to committees-and a large body of theoretical and empirical research has sought to determine when and why it exists. This paper takes as given only the weakest form the observation, namely, that committee power exists sometimes. It does not directly address the questions of when and why committee power exists, although much of the relevant literature is reviewed. Rather, it focuses on a prerequisite to the resolution of disputes about committee power. How can committee power be assessed empirically? Section I reviews three classes of explanations and identifies obstacles to convincing empirical tests of the accounts. Section II introduces an econometric approach for analyzing committee power. Section III applies the technique to a sequence of votes on minimum wage legislation in the Senate in 1977. Section IV extends the technique to multi-dimensional choice spaces. Section V is a discussion and summary

Collective Decision-Making and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures

[No abstract