Readings

McCubbins et al.: Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control (1987)

Administrative procedures, the system of rules and practices that agencies must employ when making decisions, are a mechanism for inducing compliance. Administrative procedures and acts enable politicians (in exec- utive and legislative branches) to keep administrative decisions in line with their interests without having to really pay much attention to the bureaucracy. Administrative law serves the purpose of helping elected politicians retain control of policymaking. Not only do procedures stack the deck to benefit favored constituents, they also set up a political environment which mirrors the political forces that created the agency and help with problems of assymetric information. In summary, administrative procedures create a decision making environment within an agency that guide policy choices to favor constituencies important to political overseers.

Cox et al.: Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives (2005)

Advances a partisan theory and presents a series of empirical tests of that theory's predictions (pitted against others). An elaboration of Cox and McCubbins's earlier (1993) theory. Argues against Krehbiel (who claims parties don't matter) and Rohde (who argues for "conditional" party government). The evidence demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process in order to prevent bills that the party dislikes from reaching the floor. Legislative parties are best analogized to legal or accountancy partnerships, with various gradations of junior and senior partners. They specialize in controlling the agenda, rather than in controlling votes. That is, they seek to determine what is voted on to begin with, in order to lessen the pressure on determining how their members' votes are cast (negative agenda control). Given that one party's legislative accomplishments are another party's failures, then each member shares, within his or her party, a desire to control the agenda such that their legislation gets on the agenda and the opposing party's does not. The opportunity costs are large. To the extent possible, members of the majority party will want to monopolize (or cartelize) control of the legislative agenda onto themselves, within the legislature. The agenda is cartelized when (1) special agenda-setting powers are formally delegated to various offices, such as committee chairs, the Speakership, and the Rules Committee; (2) the majority party's members secure most of these offices, so that "agenda-setting services" can be procured only from members of the procedural cartel, just as certain kinds of economic services or goods can be procured only from the relevant economic cartel; and (3) the majority party's "senior partners," who hold these agenda-setting offices, act according to a minimal fiduciary standard-namely, that they do not use their official powers to push legislation that would pass on the floor against the wishes of most in their party.

Krehbiel: Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking (1998)

Advances the provocative theory that divided government actually has little effect on legislative productiv- ity. Krehbiel argues that the pivotal vote on a piece of legislation is not the one that gives a bill a simple majority, but the vote that allows its supporters to override a possible presidential veto or to put a halt to a filibuster. The game works in a sequence. The median pivot moves first, choosing either a new policy or the status quo. The filibuster pivot then decides whether to sustain or block a filibuster attempt. Next, the president decides whether to veto. If he signs the bill, the game ends; otherwise, the veto override pivot decides whether to override the veto. Gridlock can occur at any stage; the places where gridlock can be broken are (1) if the president signs the bill or (2) if the veto override chooses to override the veto. A gridlock interval, the space between the veto pivot and the filibuster pivot containing moderate policies, is the generated space in which no legislation passes. This theory of pivots also explains why, when bills are passed, winning coalitions usually are bipartisan and supermajority sized. The main conclusion is that it is not parties, but pivotal voters that explains more.

Shepsle: Rational choice institutionalism (2006)

An examinaiton of institutions through the lense of rational choice theory. Formulates that institutions can be a game (like north's definition where institutions are the rules of the game) or instead of these rules as external provisions institutional rules are the view provided by the players themselves as they play the way they want to, rather than the way they are told they are supposed to play. Creates a distinction between regulatory and normative by calling them structured and unstructured institutions. Sees Institutions as limiting and liberating, an idea that has been seen else where as well.

Cox et al.: How Much Is Majority Status in the U.S. Congress Worth? (1999)

A key premise of partisan theories of congressional organization is that majority status confers substantial procedural advantages. In this article, we take advantage of changes in party control of the House and Senate, such as that following the Republicans' historic victory in the midterm elections of 1994, to assess the value of majority status in terms of contributions from access-seeking political action committees (PACs). We estimate that majority status in the House was worth about $36,000 per member in receipts from corporate and trade PACs circa 1994-even controlling for the usual factors cited in the literature as affecting members' ability to raise money (such as committee assignments and voting record). The value of majority status in the Senate is even larger in absolute terms, although smaller in proportion to the total amount of money raised. Our results show that majority status is a valuable asset, one worth considerable collective effort to attain.

Neustadt: Presidential power: the politics of leadership (1964)

Argues that the search for personal influence is at the center of the job of being President. The strength and weakness of a president turns on his/her ppersonal capacity to influence he conduct of those who make up the government. Thus influences becomes the mark of leaderhsip. To rate a President according to these rules, Neustadt looks into the President's capabilities as seeker and as weilder of effective influence upon those involved in governing the country. Individual differences in reputation, prestige, and ability to capitalize on bargaining advantages of office lead to differences in effectiveness of presidential power and influence.

Urofsky: Marbury v. Madison (2015)

At the end of President John Adams' term, his Secretary of State failed to deliver documents commissioning William Marbury as Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia. Once President Thomas Jefferson was sworn in, in order to keep members of the opposing political party from taking office, he told James Madison, his Secretary of State, to not deliver the documents to Marbury. Marbury then sued James Madison asking the Supreme Court to issue a writ requiring him to deliver the documents necessary to officially make Marbury Justice of the Peace. As a result of Marshall's decision Marbury was denied his commission. However, the Marbury v. Madison decision resulted in establishment of the concept of judicial review.

Epstein et al.: The Effect of War on the Supreme Court (2005)

Chapter is a summary from "The Supreme Court During Crisis: How War Affects only Non-War Cases." Epstein et al outline the two streams of thought regarding judicial review in times of war: crisis theory and the Milligam theory, ultimately concluding in line with the former. They use the process of "matching" similar cases in wartime to non-wartime, concluding there is a 10% point increase chance of the court ruling against civil liberties in wartime.

Kalla et al.: Congressional Officials Grant Access Due To Campaign Contributions: A Randomized Field Experiment (2015)

Concern that lawmakers grant preferential treatment to individuals because they have contributed to po- litical campaigns has long occupied jurists, scholars, and the public. However, the effects of campaign contributions on legislators' behavior have proven notoriously difficult to assess. We report the first randomized field experiment on the topic. In the experiment, a political organization attempted to schedule meetings between 191 Members of Congress and their constituents who had contributed to political campaigns. However, the organization randomly assigned whether it informed legislators' offices that individuals who would attend the meetings were contributors. Congressional offices made considerably more senior officials available for meetings when offices were informed the attendees were donors, with senior officials attending such meetings more than three times as often (p < 0.01). Influential policymakers thus appear to make themselves much more accessible to individuals because they have contributed to campaigns, even in the absence of quid pro quo arrangements. These findings have significant impli- cations for ongoing legal and legislative debates. The hypothesis that individuals can command greater attention from influential policymakers by contributing to campaigns has been among the most contested explanations for how financial resources translate into political power. The simple but revealing experiment presented here elevates this hypothesis from extensively contested to scientifically supported.

Huber et al.: Politics, Delegation, and Bureaucracy (2008)

Considerable energy has been devoted to developing models of the strategies that politicians use to shape bureaucratic behavior. Central to these models are two assumptions: first, bureaucrats, left to their own devices, will pursue outcomes that are not necessarily in the interest of politicians, and second, bureaucrats have more policy expertise than politicians. From these two assumptions, four theoretical arguments consistently emerge regarding delegation strategies. First, as policy uncertainty increases, politicians can achieve better outcomes by giving more discretion to bureaucrats. Second, as the policy preferences of politicians and bureaucrats converge, politicians can achieve better outcomes by giving more discretion to bureaucrats. Third, as ex post mechanisms to achieve policy goals become more effective, politicians should give bureaucrats more discretion. And fourth, greater political uncertainty provides current politicians with the incentive to shield bureaucratic actions from future political influence.

Hall et al.: Buying Time: Moneyed Interests and the Mobilization of Bias in Congressional Committees (1990)

Develop a view of the member-donor relationship that questions the theoretical underpinnings of the vote- buying hypothesis itself and suggests two alternative claims: (1) the effects of group expenditures are more likely to appear in committee than on the floor; and (2) the behavior most likely to be affected is members' legislative involvement, not their votes. In order to test this account, we specify a model of committee participation and estimate it using data from three House committees. In contrast to the substantial literature on contributions and roll calls, our analysis provides solid support for the importance of moneyed interests in the legislative process. We also find evidence that members are more responsive to organized business interests within their districts than to unorganized voters even when voters have strong preferences and the issue at stake is salient.

Downs: An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957)

Downs starts from this basic model: In a world of perfect information, each voter would compare his expected utility of having party A (incumbent) in government (for another term, that is) with the expected utility of having party B (opposition) in government. This utility differential would determine each voter's choice at the ballot box. These decisions about utility, however, lack perfect information. He must estimate all these questions about utility based on the "few areas of government activity where the difference between parties is great enough to impress him" (46).

Baumgartner et al.: Lobbying and Policy Change: Who wins,who loses, and why (2009)

During the 2008 election season, politicians from both sides of the aisle promised to rid government of lobbyists' undue influence. For the authors of Lobbying and Policy Change, the most extensive study ever done on the topic, these promises ring hollow-not because politicians fail to keep them but because lobbies are far less influential than political rhetoric suggests. Based on a comprehensive examination of ninety-eight issues, this volume demonstrates that sixty percent of recent lobbying campaigns failed to change policy despite millions of dollars spent trying. Why? The authors find that resources explain less than five percent of the difference between successful and unsuccessful efforts. Moreover, they show, these attempts must overcome an entrenched Washington system with a tremendous bias in favor of the status quo. Though elected officials and existing policies carry more weight, lobbies have an impact too, and when advocates for a given issue finally succeed, policy tends to change significantly. The authors argue, however, that the lobbying community so strongly reflects elite interests that it will not fundamentally alter the balance of power unless its makeup shifts dramatically in favor of average Americans' concerns.

Bonica et al.: Why Hasn't Democracy Slowed Rising Inequality? (2013a)

During the past two generations, democratic forms have coexisted with massive increases in economic inequality in the United States and many other advanced democracies. Moreover, these new inequalities have primarily benefited the top 1 percent and even the top .01 percent. These groups seem sufficiently small that economic inequality could be held in check by political equality in the form of "one person, one vote." In this paper, we explore five possible reasons why the US political system has failed to counterbalance rising inequality. First, both Republicans and many Democrats have experienced an ideological shift toward acceptance of a form of free market capitalism that offers less support for government provision of transfers, lower marginal tax rates for those with high incomes, and deregulation of a number of industries. Second, immigration and low turnout of the poor have combined to make the distribution of voters more weighted to high incomes than is the distribution of households. Third, rising real income and wealth has made a larger fraction of the population less attracted to turning to government for social insurance. Fourth, the rich have been able to use their resources to influence electoral, legislative, and regulatory processes through campaign contributions, lobbying, and revolving door employment of politicians and bureaucrats. Fifth, the political process is distorted by institutions that reduce the accountability of elected officials to the majority and hampered by institutions that combine with political polarization to create policy gridlock.

Moe: The Politics of Bureaucratic Structure (1989)

Effective government requires that institutions be strong enough to control the efforts of organized, en- trenched special interests in favor of the broader interests shared but poorly articulated by most members of society. Recent changes in our institutions and in the problems they face raise doubts about the capacity of contemporary American government to handle these parochial forces. Congress has seemingly become more fragmented, the pres- idency more politicized, and the bureaucracy more labyrinthine. After a decade or more of trying, our institutions have not mastered a variety of problems-the budget deficit, the trade imbalance, and energy insecurity-that threaten society's general interest in an economic future as bright as its past.Can the Government Govern? argues that the problem is inherently and substantially institutional and discusses the politically difficult requirements for overcoming it. In so doing, this volume opens the debate and public discussion necessary for change.Contributors include John E. Chubb writing on energy policy, David B. Yoffie on trade policy, Paul E. Peterson and Mark Rom on macroeconomic policy, Samuel Kernell on the presidency, Kenneth A. Shesple on Congress, and Terry M. Moe on the.

Fiorina et al.: Political Polarization in the American Public (2008)

For more than two decades political scientists have discussed rising elite polarization in the United States, but the study of mass polarization did not receive comparable attention until fairly recently. This article surveys the literature on mass polarization. It begins with a discussion of the concept of polarization, then moves to a critical consideration of different kinds of evidence that have been used to study polarization, concluding that much of the evidence presents problems of inference that render conclusions problematic. The most direct evidence-citizensâĂŹ positions on public policy issues-shows little or no indication of increased mass polarization over the past two to three decades. Party sorting-an increased correlation between policy views and partisan identification-clearly has occurred, although the extent has sometimes been exaggerated. Geographic polarization-the hypothesized tendency of like-minded people to cluster together-remains an open question. To date, there is no conclusive evidence that elite polarization has stimulated voters to polarize, on the one hand, or withdraw from politics, on the other.

Ansolabehere et al.: Why is There so Little Money in U.S. Politics? (2003b)

In this paper, we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy-buying, but are rather a form of political participation and consumption. We summarize the data on campaign spending, and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals, not special interests, are the main source of campaign contributions. Moreover, we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal good, dependent upon income, and campaign contributions as a percent of GDP have not risen appreciably in over 100 years; if anything, they have probably fallen. We then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular notion that contributions buy legislators' votes. Finally, we illustrate that when one controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects, there is little relationship between money and legislator votes. Thus, the question is not why there is so little money politics, but rather why organized interests give at all. We conclude by offering potential answers to this question.

Black: On the Rationale of Group Decision-making (1948)

In this paper, we present a new method for group decision making using incomplete fuzzy preference relations based on the additive consistency and the order consistency with consistency degrees to overcome the drawbacks of Lee's method, where Lee's method cannot obtain the correct preference order of alternatives in some situations. First, we estimate unknown preference values of incomplete fuzzy preference relations based on the additive consistency. Then, we construct modified consistency matrices of experts which satisfy the additive consistency and the order consistency simultaneously. We also prove some properties of the constructed modified consistency matrices. Finally, based on the constructed modified consistency matrices of experts, we present a new method for group decision making. The proposed method provides us with a useful way for group decision making using incomplete fuzzy preference relations based on the additive consistency and the order consistency with consistency degrees.

Cox et al.: Legislative Leviathan: American Government Politics and Policy (1993)

Majority parties as &quot;legislative cartels&quot; usurp power and make rules governing the structure and process of legislation. Members agree on a leader and arrange incentive structure so that ameliorating collective action problem benefits everyone. Evidence shows that party loyalty is a statistically significant indicator of being assigned to a committee. First attempt in rational choice literature to show that parties are important. Abstract: This book reevaluates the role of parties and committees, and the interactions between them, in the post- World War II House of Representatives. Our view is that parties in the House-especially majority parties-are a species of "legislative cartel." These cartels seize the power, theoretically resident in the House, to make rules governing the structure and process of legislation. Possession of this rule-making power leads to two main consequences. First, the legislative process in general-and the committee system in particular-is stacked in favor of majority-party interests. Second, because members of the majority party have all the structural advantages, the key players in most legislative deals are members of the majority party and the majority partyâĂŹs central agreements are facilitated by cartel rules and policed by the cartelâĂŹs leadership. Just like members of other cartels, members of majority parties face continual incentives to "cheat" on the deals that have been struck. These incentives to cheat threaten both the existence of the cartel and the efficient operation of the relevant "market"-in this case, in legislative trades. The structure of the majority party and the structure that the majority party imposes on the House can be viewed as resolving or ameliorating membersâĂŹ incentives to cheat, thereby facilitating mutually beneficial trade.

Mayhew: Congress: The Electoral Connection (1974)

Mayhew argues that the principal motivation of legislators is reelection and that the pursuit of this goal affects the way they behave and the way that they make public policy. Reelection is the primary focus because it must be achieved if any of the other goals are to be achieved. Members of congress perceive their position as tenuous and in danger of defeat and make accomodations to increase their chances. Defines three basic kinds of activities congressmen find electorally useful as advertising, credit claiming, and position taking.The organization of Congress meets the reelection needs of its members remarkably well, and the satisfaction of electoral needs requires remarkably little zero-sum conflict among members.

Canes-Wrone et al.: Judicial Selection and Death Penalty Decisions (2014)

Most U.S. state supreme court justices face elections or reappointment by elected officials, and research suggests that judicial campaigns have come to resemble those for other offices. We develop predictions on how selection systems should affect judicial decisions and test these predictions on an extensive dataset of death penalty decisions by state courts of last resort. Specifically, the data include over 12,000 decisions on over 2000 capital punishment cases decided between 1980 and 2006 in systems with partisan, nonpartisan, or retention elections or with reappointment. As predicted, the findings suggest that judges face the greatest pressure to uphold capital sentences in systems with nonpartisan ballots. Also as predicted, judges respond similarly to public opinion in systemswith partisan elections or reappointment.Finally, the results indicate that theplebiscitary influencesonjudicial behavior emerge only after interest groups began achieving success at targeting justices for their decisions.

Baum: How Public Opinion Constrains the Use of Force : The Case of Operation Restore Hope (2010)

Most previous research on the influence of domestic politics on international conflict behavior treats public opinion as endogenous to political institutions, leaders' preferences, or both. In contrast, I argue that public opinion is more accurately charaterized as partially exogenous. I further argue that, partly as a consequence, public scrutiny can inhibit (U.S.) presidents from using force as a foreign policy tool, particularly when the strategic stakes in a dispute are relatively modest. The literature on domestic audience costs, in turn, holds that public scrutiny may enbance a democratic leader's credibility in the eyes of a potential adversary, thereby increasing his likelihood of victory in a dispute. Yet, it also raises the potential political price of a bad outcome. Democratic leaders are therefore cross-pressured by the simultaneous advantages and disadvantages of public scrutiny. As a preliminary test of the theory, I conduct a plausibility probe of the influences of public opinion on the decision making of Presidents Bush and Clinton with respect to the 1992-1994 (U.S.) intervention in Somalia. I find that only by considering the constraining effect of public scrutiny can we fully understand these two presidents' policies regarding Somalia.

Krehbiel: Pivotal Politics: A Refinement of Nonmarket Analysis for Voting Institutions (1999)

On any given issue a significant minority of legislators will oppose the lobbying manager's recommendations no matter what and a sizeable minority will favor them no matter what. Effective nonmarket strategies in contrast consist of knowing enough about governmental processes to ascertain who are the likely pivotal voters. This article presents a theory that provides a parsimonious way to think about pivotal voters in separation-of-power situations. Ultimately the theory provides guidance for the formation of more efficient and effective nonmarket strategies.

Ferejohn: Judicializing politics, politicizing law (2002)

One can distinguish at least three ways in which courts have taken on new and important roles relative to legislatures. First, courts have been increasingly able and willing to limit and regulate the exercise of parliamentary authority by imposing substantive limits on the power of legislative institutions. Second, courts have increasingly become places where substantive policy is made. Third, judges have been increasingly willing to regulate the conduct of political activity itself-whether practiced in or around legislatures, agencies, or the electorate-by constructing and enforcing standards of acceptable behavior for interest groups, political parties, and both elected and appointed officials. But judicialization is not simply limited to the increasingly important, pervasive, and direct roles that courts play in making policy. The fact that courts fre- quently intervene in policy-making processes also means that other political actors, as well as groups seeking political action, have reason to take the possibility of judicial reaction into account.

Persson et al.: Electoral Systems and Economic Policy (2006)

Over its long lifetime, "political economy" has had many different meanings: the science of managing the resources of a nation so as to provide wealth to its inhabitants for Adam Smith; the study of how the ownership of the means of production influenced historical processes for Marx; the study of the inter-relationship between eco- nomics and politics for some twentieth-century commentators; and for others, a methodology emphasizing individual rationality (the economic or "public choice" approach) or institutional adaptation (the sociological version). This Handbook views political economy as a grand (if imperfect) synthesis of these various strands, treating political econ- omy as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behavior and institutions. This Handbook surveys the field of political economy, with fifty-eight chapters ranging from micro to macro, national to interna- tional, institutional to behavioral, methodological to substantive. Chapters on social choice, constitutional theory, and public economics are set alongside ones on voters, parties and pressure groups, macroeconomics and politics, capitalism and democracy, and international political economy and international conflict.

Krehbiel: Where's the Party? (1993)

Political parties are prominent in legislative politics and legislative research. Using data from the 99th Congress, this article assesses the degree to which significant party behaviour - defined and operationalized as behaviour that is independent of preferences - occurs in two key stages of legislative organization: the formation of standing committees and the appointment of conferees. Four hypotheses are developed and tested. When controlling for preferences and other hypothesized effects, positive and significant party effects are rare. A discussion addresses some criticisms of this unorthodox approach and attempts to reconcile some differences between these and previous findings.

McCubbins et al.: McCubbins & Rodriguez - The Judiciary and the Role of Law (2006)

Positive Political Theory (PPT) provides an alternative to traditional legal analysis which studies courts in isolation and interprets judges as moving last in the policy-making process. Argues that courts play a significant role in controlling bureaucracy through administrative procedure, constitutional review, and "hard look" review. PPT generates a model in which the courts operate in a political system in which judges are constrained in decision making, and move in the middle of a highly interactive process. Key to this theory is that with respect to administrative law or statutory interpretation cases, Congress can always overturn a judicial ruling-thus curbing and constraining their power. Therefore, PPT argues that the political process constrains the types of decisions judges can make, and because of this the judges must act strategically to anticipate how other political actors will react to their decisions.

Hall et al.: Lobbying as legislative subsidy (2006)

Professional lobbyists are among the most experienced, knowledgeable, and strategic actors one can find in the everyday practice of politics. Nonetheless, their behavioral patterns often appear anomalous when viewed in the light of existing theories. We revisit these anomalies in search of an alternative theory. We model lobbying not as exchange (vote buying) or persuasion (informative signaling) but as a form of legislative subsidy-a matching grant of policy information, political intelligence, and legislative labor to the enterprises of strategically selected legislators. The proximate political objective of this strategy is not to change legislators' minds but to assist natural allies in achieving their own, coincident objectives. The theory is simple in form, realistic in its principal assump- tions, and counterintuitive in its main implications. Empirically, the model renders otherwise anomalous regularities comprehensible and predictable.

Moe: Presidents, Institutions, and Theory (1993)

Provides a prooposal for new methodology in presidency research: institutional theories of the presidency are more likely to prove successful over the long haul than personal theories, and scholars must take a more restrictive view of what they hope to explain. Moe's solution is to introduce rational choice to the study of the presidency as an institution. Argues that presidential scholars are more likely to be successful if they concentrate theoretical resources on the institutional side, omitting personal factors from their theories, and if they move toward a methodology that emphasizes parsimony. This is primarily a rebuttal to the work of Neustadt and the "personal presidency" approach in favor of a more quantitative analysis of the office.

Ho et al.: How Not To Lie with Judicial Votes: Misconceptions, Measurement, and Models (2010)

Rapid advances in the statistical measurement of judicial behavior have provided concise, meaningful, and intuitive summaries of differences between judges based on votes. Yet such scores remain poorly understood, widely misinterpreted, and commonly misused. We provide a guide for how to interpret such measures, clarify major miscon- ceptions, and argue that extant scores are merely a special case of a general model-based measurement approach to studying judicial behavior. When applied beyond aggregate merits votes, such measurement approaches empower the meaningful examination, data collection, and incorporation of legal doctrine. We demonstrate how such measures- when augmented with jurisprudentially meaningful data-facilitate the study of substantive questions beyond the hackneyed "law vs. policy" debate, with case studies of the constitutional revolution of 1937, the dimensionality of the Supreme Court, the historical origins of the standing doctrine, statutory interpretation, and backlash.

Howell et al.: Agencies by Presidential Design (2002)

Scholars have largely ignored one of the most important ways in which presidents influence the adminis- trative state in the modern era, that is, by creating administrative agencies through executive action. Because they can act unilaterally, presidents alter the kinds of administrative agencies that are created and the control they wield over the federal bureaucracy. We analyze the 425 agencies established between 1946 and 1995 and find that agencies created by administrative action are significantly less insulated from presidential control than are agencies created through legislation. We also find that the ease of congressional legislative action is a significant predictor of the number of agencies created by executive action. We conclude that the very institutional factors that make it harder for Congress to legislate provide presidents new opportunities to create administrative agencies on their own, and to design them in ways that maximize executive control.

McCubbins et al.: Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols Versus Fire Alarms (1984)

Scholars have often remarked that Congress neglects its oversight responsibility. We argue that what appears to be an neglect of oversight really is the rational preference for one form of oversight-which we call "fire-alarm oversight"-over another form-police-patrol oversight. Our analysis supports a somewbat neglected way of looking at the strategies by which legislators seek to achieve their goals. Fire alarm oversight is less centralized and involves less active and idirect intervention than police-patrol oversight: instead of examining a sample of administrative dcisions, looking for violations of legislative goals, Congress establishes a system of rules, procedures, and informal practices that enable individual citizens and organized interest groups to examine administrative decisions, to charge executive agencies with violating congressional goals, and to seek remedies.

Figueiredo et al.: The New Separation of Powers Approach to American Politics (2008)

Since 1990, a new approach to studying American politics has emerged based on rational choice methods that we call the "new separationâĂŘofâĂŘpowers approach." Often more implicitly than explicitly, the traditional approach to American politics emphasized separation of powers as the independence of the branches. In contrast to the traditional approach, the new one explicitly studies the interaction of the institutions, incorporating a broader range of actors and embedding them in models of strategic interaction. The results are dramatic. Scholars demonstrate that we cannot fully understand the behavior of one institution without understanding it in the context of the others.

Bonica et al.: The Politics of Selecting the Bench from the Bar: The Legal Profession and Partisan Incentives to Politicize the Judiciary (2015a)

The American judiciary has increasingly come under attack as polarized and politicized. Using a newly collected dataset that captures the ideological posi- tioning of nearly half a million judges and lawyers who have made campaign contri- butions, we present empirical evidence showing politicization through various tiers of the judicial hierarchy. We show that the higher the court, the more conservative and more polarized it becomes, in contrast with the broader population of attorneys, who tend to be liberal. These findings suggest that political actors not only appear to rely on ideology in the selection of judges, but that they strategically prioritize higher courts. To our knowledge, our study is the first to provide a direct ideological comparison across tiers of the judiciary and between judges and lawyers, and also the.

Gibson: Judicial Institutions (2006)

The Attitudinal Model begins with the hypothesis that Supreme Court justices decide "disputes in light of the facts of the case vis-a-vis [their] ideological attitudes and values" (Segal and Spaeth 2002, 86). Attitudinal- ists are often challenged by those who assert that judges are frequently strongly constrained by stare decisis and precedent. The argument has more plausibility at the trial court level, where judges are often faced with routine decisions requiring the application of existing law to instant disputes. At the appellate court level it appears that law rarely dictates outcomes. Role theory is often another measure of behavior as Gibson (1978) has shown that judges' perceptions of what they ought to do as judges do in fact influence their decision-making behavior. Epstein and Knight (2000, 625) have documented well the rise of rational choice approaches to judicial decision- making, and in particular models of strategic choices by judges. They define the strategic model as: "(1) social actors make choices in order to achieve certain goals; (2) social actors act strategically in the sense that their choices depend on their expectations about the choices of other actors; and (3) these choices are structured by the institutional setting in which they are made" (2000, 626).

McKelvey: Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and some implications for agenda control (1976)

The Median Voter Theorem helps us make sense with the unidimensional spatial modelâĂŤthat is, when politics can be arrayed on a line. However, in multidimensional modelling cycling is not only possible but can almost always be generated. In multidimensional settings (except in extremely restrictive and unrealistic situations) there will be no majority rule empty-winset point. Instead there will be chaosâĂŤno Condorcet winner, anything can happen, and whoever controls the order of voting can determine the final outcome. The voting system is completely cycling. In two dimensions, equilibriumâĂŤ a stable outcomeâĂŤis achieved only through agenda setting, or clever manipulation of voting and amending.

Heitshusen: The Speaker of the House: House Officer, Party Leader, and Representative (2011a)

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is widely viewed as symbolizing the power and authority of the House. The Speaker's most prominent role is that of presiding officer of the House. In this capacity, the Speaker is empowered by House rules to administer proceedings on the House floor, including the power to recognize Members on the floor to speak or make motions and the power to appoint Members to conference committees. The Speaker also oversees much of the non-legislative business of the House, such as general control over the Hall of the House and the House side of the Capitol and service as chair of the House Office Building Commission. The SpeakerâĂŹs role as "elect of the elect" in the House also places him or her in a highly visible position with the public. The Speaker also serves not only as titular leader of the House but also as leader of the majority party conference. The Speaker is often responsible for airing and defending the majority party's legislative agenda in the House. The Speaker's third distinct role is that of an elected Member of the House. Although elected as an officer of the House, the Speaker continues to be a Member as well. As such the Speaker enjoys the same rights, responsibilities, and privileges of all Representatives. However, the Speaker has traditionally refrained from debating or voting in most circumstances, and does not sit on any standing committee of the House.

Sen: How Not to Pick Judges (2014)

The data show that, even when matching comparable candidates, the bar association rates minorities and women significantly lower than their white or male counterparts. For example, African-Americans are 42 percentage points less likely to receive a "well qualified" (or "exceptionally well qualified," when that category was still being used) rating than are whites who have comparable educational and professional qualifications and are nominated by the same president. Women are 19 percentage points less likely to earn a thumbs up. As for a candidate's political leanings and party affiliation, these neither hurt nor helped at the district court level. It is possible that political beliefs matter more for higher courts, and less for lower courts, although research on that point is still inconclusive.

Segal: Separation-of-Powers Games in the Positive Theory of Congress and Courts (1997)

The hallmark of the new positive theories of the judiciary is that Supreme Court justices will frequently defer to the preferences of Congress when making decisions, particularly in statutory cases in which it is purportedly easy for Congress to reverse the Court. Alternatively, judicial attitudinalists argue that the institutional structures facing the Court allow the justices to vote their sincere policy preferences. This paper compares these sincere and sophisticated models of voting behavior by Supreme Court justices. Using a variety of tests on the votes of Supreme Court justices in statutory cases decided between 1947 and 1992, I find some evidence of sophisticated behavior, but most tests suggest otherwise. Moreover, direct comparisons between the two models unambiguously favor the attitudinal model. I conclude that the justices overwhelmingly engage in rationally sincere behavior.

Segal et al.: Judicial behavior (2008a)

The study of law and politics is one of the foundation stones of the discipline of political science, and it has been one of the most productive areas of cross-fertilization between the various subfields of political science and between political science and other cognate disciplines. This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the field of law and politics in all its diversity, ranging from such traditional subjects as theories of jurisprudence, constitutionalism, judicial politics and law-and-society to such re-emerging subjects as comparative judicial politics, international law, and democratization. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics gathers together leading scholars in the field to assess key literatures shaping the discipline today and to help set the direction of research in the decade ahead.

Huber et al.: Deliberate Discretion: the Institutional Foundations of Bureaucratic Autonomy (2002)

The ways politicians use laws to shape policy vary considerably across polities. In some cases, legislatures adopt detailed and specific laws in an effort to micromanage policymaking processes. In others, they adopt general and vague laws that leave the executive and bureaucrats substantial discretion to fill in the policy details. Drawing on a range of evidence from advanced parliamentary democracies and the U.S. States, they argue that particular institutional forms-such as the nature of electoral laws, the structure of the legal system, and the professionalism of the legislature-have a systematic and predictable effect on how politicians use laws to shape the policymaking process.

Caldeira et al.: Lobbying for Justice: Organized Interests, Supreme Court Nominations, and the United States Senate (1998)

Theory: By providing information to senators and their constituents about how nominees are likely to behave on the Court if confirmed; and by communicating information about constituents' preferences through grass- roots lobbying campaigns, interest groups help shape senators' preferences for nominees and inform them about the appropriate importance to attach to constituency preferences. Hypotheses: We argue that interest groups play an important role in shaping senators' decisions. The empirical implication of our argument is that unless some account of groups' lobbying efforts is included in models used to explain congressional voting, the importance of traditional predictors such as ideology and constituency will be exaggerated. Method: Using data from surveys of organized interests' activities on the Bork, Souter, and Thomas nominations, we estimate the coefficients for our model with a two-stage OLS-probit procedure. Results: Our empirical analyses indicate that interest group lobbying has a statistically significant effcct on senators' confirmation votes on all three nominations.

Adler et al.: Demand-side theory and congressional committee composition: A constituency charac- teristics approach (1997)

Theory: Recent work on congressional committee composition suggests that the informational or partisan models better explain legislative structure than models based on "distributive" politics. We argue that in many instances a gains from exchange model, where committees are composed of members representing high-demand constituencies, is more appropriate. Hypotheses: The gains from exchange theory of congressional structure argues that congressional committees will be composed of representatives who come from congressional districts with higher demand the policy for benefits that each committee controls. In contrast to previous findings committees that are frequently ideologically representative of the entire chamber, these gains from exchange models suggest that a more accurate test of the policy needs of legislators would incorporate economic, social, and geographic information about the congressional districts that they represent. Methods: Census data, as well as information from several other sources, are collected for every congressional district from 1943 to 1994. District profiles on certain key characteristics committee for members are compared with those of the chamber using a nonparametric Monte Carlo simulation (difference-in-medians) test. The membership of 13 standing House committees is examined across 50 years. Results: Several committees are found to be composed of members representing districts whose characteristics indicate that they have high levels of "need" for the policy benefits under the jurisdiction of that committee. These findings, frequently consistent across time, apply to both committees that are traditionally considered constituency service- oriented and several that are thought to be more "policy oriented."

Howell et al.: Separation of Powers and the Use of Military Force (2005)

There is a strong link between the partisan composition of the legislature and the President's ability to act in both domestic and interantional realms-domestic contraints matter. Unilateral action is rare when large and unified majorities govern Congress. If strong majorities support the President's view it is better to engage in the legislative process and set policy. However, if strong majoritis oppose the President's view then unilateral action may provoke a strong and negative response from Congress. Therefore, it is when small and divided majorities are scattered in Congress that President's have incentives to strike out on their own.

Sen: How Judicial Qualification Ratings May Disadvantage Minority and Female Candidates (2015)

This article uses two newly collected data sets to investigate the reliance by political actors on the external vetting of judicial candidates, in particular vetting conducted by the nation's largest legal organization, the American Bar Association (ABA). Using these data, I show that minority and female nominees are more likely than whites and males to receive lower ratings, even after controlling for education, experience, and partisanship via matching. These discrepancies are important for two reasons. First, as I show, receiving poor ABA ratings is correlated with confirmation failure. Second, I demonstrate that ABA ratings do not actually predict whether judges will be "better" in terms of reversal rates. Taken together, these findings complicate the ABA's influential role in judicial nominations, both in terms of setting up possible barriers against minority and female candidates and also in terms of its actual utility in predicting judicial performance.

Gilens et al.: Testing Theories of American Politics : Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens (2014)

This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass- based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

Howell: Executives-The American Presidency (2009)

This very brief survey offers mixed assessments of the quantitative literature on the US presidency. On the one hand, the publication rates of quantitative presidency research have been rather dismal. In the last twenty-five years, only one in ten research articles published in the sub-field's premier journal had a quantitative component. Signs, however, suggest that change is afoot. In the last several years, the presidency sub-field's journal has published a greater proportion of quantitative studies, written by a wider assortment of scholars.

Baumgartner et al.: Interest Niches and Policy Bandwagons: Patterns of Interest Group Involvement in National Politics (2001)

Using data from more than 19,000 reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, we analyze the distribution of lobbying on a random sample of 137 issues and find a tremendous skewness. The median issue involved only 15 interest groups, whereas 8 of the issues involved more than 300 interest groups. The top 5% of the issues accounted for more than 45% of the lobbying, whereas the bottom 50% of the issues accounted for less than 3% of the total. This distribution makes generalizations about interest group conflict difficult and helps explain why many scholars have disagreed about the abilities of lobbyists to get what they want. We also con- firm and expand upon previous findings regarding the tremendous predominance of business firms in the Washington lobbying population.

McCarty et al.: The Hunt for Party Discipline in Congress (2001)

We analyze party discipline in the House of Representatives between 1947 and 1998. The effects of party pressures can be represented in a spatial model by allowing each party to have its own cutting line on roll call votes. Voting behavior changes fairly dramatically when members change parties. Party discipline, we conclude, is manifest in the location of the legislator's ideal point in the standard spatial model. It is not a strategic variable manipulated by party whips from one roll call to another but a part of a legislator's overall environment that forms her induced preferences. The discipline that leads a legislator to choose a spatial location may result as much from external pressures of campaign donors and primary voters as from the internal pressures of the congressional party. Thus, the evidence we present does not suggest that a resurgence of party or partyinduced institutional change is responsible for the greater cohesiveness of parties and polarized politics in Congress.

Jenkins et al.: Buying Negative Agenda Control in the U.S. House (2012)

We explore the foundations of the legislative party cartel, as theorized by Cox and McCubbins (1993, 2005), to determine how majority-party moderates who suffer net policy losses from themajority leadershipâĂŹs use of negative agenda control are kept from defecting from the cartel arrangement. First, we identify formally the group of majority-party members who are net policy losers. We find that those members occupying the initial 30 percent of the space within the majority-party blockout zone-that space closest to the floor median-are hurt on a pure policy basis by the cartel arrangement. Second, we find that members in this "30% zone" are rewarded disproportionately by majority-party leaders (relative to members in other intervals on the same side of the floor median) via side payments in the form of campaign contributions. In addition, majority-party members within the 30 percent zone receive side payments commensurate with their particular policy loss.

Brunell et al.: Replacement in the U.S. House: An outlier-chasing model (2015)

We know that most House seats remain within the same party over the course of a redistricting decade. For example, over 75% did so in the last decade. This gives rise to the question: "Why do some seats change hands and others not?" We seek to go beneath the standard answers (such as extent of electoral vulnerability as indicated by the previous victory margin, challenger qualifications, relative spending of challenger and incumbent, midterm loss affecting districts newly won by the president's party, realignment effects that made Democrats in the South vulnerable) to examine the conditions of ideological competition that affect each of these factors and the concomitant probability of electoral defeat. We offer a general model of unidimensional party competition across multiple constituencies, where a party "chases the outliers" of the other party that are closest to its own ideological mean, thus eliminating "anomalous" districts which should be vulnerable to change in party control, and we test that model with data from the U.S. House of Representatives 1980-2006. Over time, Democrats capture liberal and moderately liberal districts held by Republicans, while Republicans capture conservative and moderately conservative districts held by Democrats. In a neo-Downsian world where candidates do not locate at the preferences of the median voter in the district but, rather, are shifted in the direction of their own party mean, we show that this outlier-chasing dynamic can be expected, in the long run, to "empty" out the center. This results in an equilibrium of ideologically distinct parties and a high level of polarization, involving a self-reinforcing dynamic in which the seats that become vulnerable change as the parties become more distinct. Indeed, rather than puzzling about why so much polarization exists, our work suggests that the real puzzle is why it has taken so long to get to the level of polarization we presently enjoy. We suggest that the combination of incumbency advantage, and multidimensionality of political competition might be the answer, with the Civil War role of race as an independent dimension slowly wearing off.

Chen et al.: Using Legislative Districting Simulations to Measure Electoral Bias in Legislatures (2011)

When one of the major parties in the United States wins a substantially larger share of the seats than its vote share would seem to warrant, the conventional explanation lies in overt partisan or racial gerrymandering. Yet this paper uses a unique data set from Florida to demonstrate a common mechanism through which substantial partisan bias can emerge purely from residential patterns. When partisan preferences are spatially dependent and partisanship is highly correlated with population density, any districting scheme that generates relatively compact, contiguous districts will tend to produce bias against the urban party. We apply automated districting algorithms driven solely by compactness and contiguity parameters, building winner-take-all districts out of the precinct-level results of the tied Florida presidential election of 2000. The simulation results demonstrate that with 50 percent of the votes statewide, the Republicans can expect to win around 59 percent of the seats without any-intentional gerrymandering. This is because urban districts tend to be homogeneous and Democratic while suburban and rural districts tend to be moderately Republican. Thus in Florida and other states where Democrats are highly concentrated in cities, the seemingly apolitical practice of requiring compact, contiguous districts will produce systematic pro-Republican electoral bias.

Cameron: Veto bargaining: presidents and the politics of negative power (2000)

With one party controlling the presidency and the opposing party controlling Congress, the veto has inevitably become a critical tool of presidential power. Combining sophisticated game theory with unprecedented data, this book analyzes how divided party presidents use threats and vetoes to wrest policy concessions from a hostile Congress. Case studies of the most important vetoes in recent history add texture to the analysis, detailing how President Clinton altered the course of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution. Cameron has two major points: (1) The veto enables presidents to influence legislative outcomes; and (2) Divided government does not make governing impossible, it simply encourages more inter-branch bargaining. Cameron begins with an empirical analysis of all 434 vetoes issued by U.S. presidents between the beginning of the Truman administration in 1945 and the end of the Bush administration in 1992. In his analysis he focuses particular attention on how veto rates are affected by unified or divided government as well as the relative importance of a piece of legislation. Cameron finds that vetoes on both major and minor legislation are rare under unified government. However, when government is divided and the legislation under consideration is important he finds that: (1) vetoes are not rare events - his results show that the veto rate on "landmark" legislation under divided government is 20%; (2) vetoes are often part of veto chains - a sequential bargaining process between Congress and the president; and (3) presidents routinely and successfully use vetoes to extract policy concessions from Congress -he finds that in 80% of re-passed bills Congress made some sort of concession.