Bonding, Structure and the Stability of Political Parties: Party Government in the House

The public policy benefits that parties-deliver are allocated by democratic procedures that devolve ultimately to majority rule. Majority-rule decision making, however, does not lead to consistent policy choices; it is unstable. In this paper, we argue that institutions - and thereby policy coalitions -- can be stabilized by extra-legislative organization. The rules of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives dictate that a requirement for continued membership is support on the floor of Caucus decisions for a variety of key structural matters. Because membership in the majority party’s caucus is valuable, it constitutes a bond, the posting of which stabilizes the structure of the House, and hence the policy decisions made in the House. We examine the rules of the House Democratic Caucus and find that they do in fact contain the essential elements of an effective, extralegislative bonding mechanism

The development of party-voting in England: 1832-1918

Gegenstand des Beitrags ist die historische Entwicklung des Systems der repräsentativen Demokratie in Großbritannien. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Rolle von Wahlen in diesem System und die Frage, wie sich diese Rolle im Laufe der Zeit von 1832 bis 1918 gewandelt hat. Auf die Frage, seit wann die Wähler eher der Partei und nicht mehr dem Kandidaten die Stimme geben, finden sich in der Literatur verschiedene Antworten. (1) Die erste Position datiert die Entwicklung des parteiorientierten Wahlverhaltens in die Zeit nach 1885. (2) Nach Ansicht der zweiten Position wird dieses Wahlverhalten nach 1867 signifikant. (3) In der dritten Position wird die explosive Zunahme der Zeitungen nach 1856 als Ursache für eine massive Entwicklung der Parteiloyalität angesehen. Ein zweiter Schwerpunkt ist es, auf eine systematische und quantitative Weise den Einfluß der Wähler auf ihre Parlamentsmitglieder zu erforschen. In dem Beitrag wird gezeigt, daß ein substantieller Wandel im Wählerverhalten in England stattgefunden hat, bei dem die Wähler ihre Entscheidung zunehmend an der Partei orientiert haben. (KW

Agenda Control in the Bundestag, 1980-2002

We find strong evidence of monopoly legislative agenda control by government parties in the Bundestag. First, the government parties have near-zero roll rates, while the opposition parties are often rolled over half the time. Second, only opposition parties’ (and not government parties’) roll rates increase with the distances of each party from the floor median. Third, almost all policy moves are towards the government coalition (the only exceptions occur during periods of divided government). Fourth, roll rates for government parties sky- rocket when they fall into the opposition and roll rates for opposition parties plummet when they enter government, while policy movements go from being nearly 100 per cent rightward when there is a rightist government to 100 per cent leftward under a leftist government

Why Did The Incumbency Advantage In U.S. House Elections Grow?

In the last twenty years, scholars have scrutinized the electoral advantages conferred by incumbency-both at the federal and at the state level-more than perhaps any other factor affecting U .S. legislative elections.1 Much of the literature focuses on explaining why the incumbency advantage in U .S. House elections grew so substantially, starting in the mid-1960s. The dominant contenders in the literature are two, one emphasizing resources of various kinds (Mayhew 1974) and opportunities to perform constituency services (Fiorina 1977; 1989), one emphasizing partisan dealignment (Erikson 1972; Burnham 1974; Ferejohn 1977). While not incompatible, these explanations do point to significantly different factors as key, and neither has emerged as a clear winner. In this paper, we suggest a new approach to measuring the incumbency advantage, one that disaggregates the total value of incumbency into three components. By examining the trends over time in these three components we find evidence suggesting that much of the growth in the incumbency advantage at the federal level cannot be accounted for by resource growth; rather, some version of the dealignment story will have to be employed

A Ham Sandwich Theorem for General Measures

The "ham sandwich" theorem has been proven only for measures that are absolutely continuous with respect to Lesbeque measure. We prove a generalized version of the ham sandwich theorem which is applicable to arbitrary finite measures, and we give some sufficient conditions for uniqueness of the hyperplane identified by the theorem

La organización de las legislaturas democráticas

Artículo origina

The Rule of Five

[Introduction] The County of Los Angeles was established on February 18, 1850, as one of the 27 original counties of California. In 1852, the Legislature created the office of Supervisor, and five Supervisors were elected to govern the County. Since 1887, the term of service has been 4 years. Table I exhibits the average number of terms served per Supervisor for various periods; the average is rising, suggesting that Supervisors have become more career-oriented (as have Congressmen) over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (The evidence for this suggestion is not as clear as in the Congressional case, however, where the tenure evidence, besides being clearer, can be mortised with data on the institutionalization of Congress.

Gerrymandering Roll-Calls: Votes, Decisions, and Partisan bias in Congress, 1879-2000

We argue that the standard toolbox used in electoral studies to assess the bias and responsiveness of electoral systems can also be used to assess the bias and responsiveness of legislative systems. We consider which items in the toolbox are the most appropriate for use in the legislative setting, then apply them to estimate levels of bias in the U.S. House from 1879 to 2000. Our results indicate a systematic bias in favor of the majority party over this period, with the strongest bias arising during the period of “Czar rule” (51st-60th Congresses, 1889-1910) and during the post-packing era (87th-106th Congresses, 1961-2000). This finding is consistent with the majority party possessing a significant advantage in setting the agenda. “The definition of alternatives is the supreme instrument of power.” -–E. E. Schattschneider (1960, p. 86)