Congressional Institutionalization: A Cross‐National Comparison

Abstract

This article explains variations in levels of institutionalization across legislatures of the world. It construes institutionalization as an equilibrium outcome that emerges from beliefs and investments made by political actors. Drawing insights from work on US congressional institutionalization and congressional organization, and on comparative party system institutionalization, it provides an index to measure congressional institutionalization. Using this index, it explores the constitutional factors that affect levels of congressional institutionalization. The empirical results raise a warning with respect to building comparative implications from an excessive focus on one particular case.

Local government performance and democratic consolidation: Explaining ordinance proposal in Busan Metropolitan Council

“…Nevertheless, the results show that BMC has achieved a significant level of institutionalisation in local autonomy despite adverse conditions for the consolidation of local democracy. According to Palanza et al (2016, p. 9), institutionalisation is ‘the process by which the institution/organisation acquires value and stability … leading to the increased formalisation of some practices, and increased structure, all of which increase internal capacity’. The results of network analyses here show that the BMC was gaining stability: for instance, a comparison of modular scores and the examination of cluster dendrograms show that the 7th Council was structurally more stable than the 5th and 6th Councils.…”

Constituency Preferences and Committee Selection in the Mexican Cámara de Diputados

“…The Mexican Cámara de Diputados provides a theoretically interesting case for studying the impact of constituency preferences on committee selection for two principal reasons. For one, committees in the Cámara de Diputados are quite powerful (especially in relation to other Latin American legislatures; Palanza et al 2016), and thus are attractive venues in which particularistic constituent interests could be pursued. Similar to other legislatures like the U.S. Congress or the German Bundestag, in which committees operate as potential legislative gatekeepers, Mexican committees hold considerable powers to amend and even block legislation, and possess their own staff and other resources to support detailed scrutiny of legislation (Béjar 2006, 13;Rivera 2004).…”

Spreading Influence Through Weak Ties: Cosponsorship, Legislative Networks, and Bill Success in Fragmented Congresses

“…Novel, well‐developed theories have seldom been tested in disparate environments. In spite of recent efforts to correct this problem (Alemán et al ; Alemán and Calvo ; Calvo ; Calvo and Leiras ; Crisp et al ; Micozzi ; Palanza, Scartascini, and Tommasi ; Palanza and Sin ), the challenge of applying theories beyond the United States persists.…”