Obstruction and Representativeness in Legislatures

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

“…This discussion treats these points in reverse order. Krehbiel (1985). 17 Of course, the analysis cannot be of the form: Are committees that receive restricth•e rules more "powerful" than committees that receive open rule?…”

“…As is standard in the literature, we assume that f is normally distributed with mean zero and variance u 2 independent of Zi• Some recent results suggest that the estimator used is somewhat robust to violations of the normality assumption (Ruud, 1983).9 B The assumptions here are somewhat weaker than the quadratic utility assumption used by Krehbiel andRivers, 1985, or Poole andRosenthal, 1985. 9 Alternatively, the normality assumption can be dropped altogether and semiparametrk estimation techniques (such as that suggested by Ichimura, 1986) Since direct measures of x; are unavailable, we rely on the revealed preferences of legislators in roll call votes to estimate Xi. The primary assumption necessary for the analysis is that legislators vote sincerely, i.e.…”

Majority rule outcomes and the structure of debate in one-issue-at-a-time decision-making

“…In other words, if we consider one dimension at a time, it can be shown that no matter which alternative we start from and no matter whether we first resolve the vertical differences or the horizontal differences, we always wind up with the point which is the median on each of the two dimensions as the collective choice. Thus far, we have been assuming that the dimensions of choice are given, a common assumption in the social choice literature (Krehbiel, 1984). However, the dimensions themselves may be problematic.…”

“…Second, legislative decision making in the U.S. is commonly structured through committees with defined jurisdictions. When these committees make recommendations which can only be amended subject to a germaneness requirement, this is roughly equivalent to the legislature as a whole deciding one issue at a time (Krehbiel, 1984;see however, Sullivan, 1985).…”

De onde vem nossas leis? Origem e conteúdo da legislação em perspectiva comparada

“…Um caso particular é, entretanto, o da Itália, onde, até os anos 1980, a estrutura e a dinâmica internas ao parlamento permitiam que se manifestasse essa prática (Dell'Acqua, 1970). Para um modelo formal, ver Krehbiel, 1985. parlamentar. Nesse sentido, mesmo que a tendência à racionalização tenha sido perseguida Do ponto de vista histórico, o entendimento da passagem para o domínio do executivo no processo decisório se concentra no século XIX.…”