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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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

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

Institutions and the Performance of Liberal Democracy: Judicial Procedures and the Efficacy of Constitutional Review

Modern liberal democracies typically depend on courts with the power of constitutional review to ensure that elected officials do not breach their constitutional obligations. With neither the power of the purse nor the sword, the potency of this review is not guaranteed. Courts must rely on government officials for the implementation of judicial rulings. The ability of a court to ensure that elected officials faithfully implement decisions can depend critically on the public\u27s ability to observe elected officials\u27 responses to judicial decisions. In this dissertation, I argue that courts strategically use key judicial procedures to increase the likelihood of public awareness of rulings. Drawing from the comparative judicial politics literature on separation of powers, public awareness, and noncompliance, I develop a formal model of one such procedure available to many of the world\u27s constitutional courts, public oral hearings. The model provides empirical implications for when a court will hold public hearings and how hearings affect case disposition. I then test these implications using data on cases and the use of hearings at the German Federal Constitutional Court. The results of this analysis support my argument that courts use hearings as an institutional tool to address potential noncompliance. An empirical extension of the theory to the timing of judicial decisions at the German court provides further support for my argument

Impacts of Urban Areas on Vegetation Development Along Rural-Urban Gradients in the Upper Midwest: 2003-2012

Between one-third and one-half of Earth’s land surface has been directly altered by humans, with the remainder comprised of “human-dominated ecosystems” (Vitousek et al. 2008). Earth’s population has surpassed seven billion, projected to increase by 2.5 billion by 2050 in urban areas alone (United Nations 2014). The rapid urbanization of our planet drives global environmental changes in hydrosystems, biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, land use and land cover, and climate (Grimm et al. 2008). Urban areas alter local atmospheric conditions by modifying surface albedo and consequently evapotranspiration, releasing energy through anthropogenic heat sources, and increasing atmospheric aerosols, leading to increased temperatures in cities compared with surrounding rural areas, known as the “urban heat island” effect (Arnfield 2003). Recent urbanization of our planet has generated calls for remote sensing research related to the impacts of urban areas and urbanization on the natural environment (Herold 2009; Seto, Güneralp, and Hutyra 2012). Spatially extensive, high spatial resolution data products are needed to capture phenological patterns in regions with heterogeneous land cover and external drivers such as cities, which are comprised of a mixture of land cover/land uses and experience microclimatic influences, namely the UHI effect (Fisher, Mustard, and Vadeboncoeur 2006; Melaas, Friedl, and Zhu 2013). Here I use the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) product provided by the Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) project to analyze the impacts of urban areas and urban heat islands on the seasonal development of the vegetated land surface on an urban-rural gradient for six regions located in the Upper Midwest of the United States. I fit NDVI observations from 2003-2012 as a convex quadratic function of thermal time as accumulated growing degree-days (AGDD) calculated from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature product to model decadal land surface phenology metrics. In general, duration of growing season measured in AGDD in green core areas is equivalent to duration of growing season in urban extent areas, but significantly longer than duration of growing season in regions outside of the urban extent. I found an exponential relationship in the difference of duration of growing season between urban and surrounding rural regions as a function of distance from urban core areas in perennial vegetation land cover types, with an average magnitude of 669 AGDD and the influence of urban areas extending over 11 km from urban core areas. A linear relationship exists between the modeled rate of vegetation green up and maximum NDVI for perennial forests, but not for annual croplands. At the regional scale, relative change in duration of growing season does not appear to be significantly related to total area of urban extent, population, or latitude, with the distance and magnitude that urban areas influence vegetation in and near cities being relatively uniform, although larger urban areas have a greater impact on duration of growing season in terms of total area