Weingast B.R., Wittman D. The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

192 bicameralism

5 Informational Explanations

.............................................................................

Another potential argument for bicameralism is that it may promote more informed

legislative decision-making. Since passage is required by multiple chambers, a “two-

heads are better than one” logic suggests that bicameralism should lead to better

legislative decisions. Rogers (2001) attempts to formalize this logic to provide an

informational rationale for bicameralism. In his model, the reconciliation of inter-

chamber diﬀerences through a “conference” committee allows for the aggregation

of information that is dispersed across chambers.

Since it allows the dispersed

information to be aggregated, a bicameral process is less likely to produce the wrong

decision than a unicameral process. In fact, information is better aggregated when

the chambers have congruent preferences. Thus, Rogers presents his model as an

argument for congruent bicameralism.

While suggestive, Rogers’s model is restrictive, and it is unclear how well it would

generalize. Each chamber is modeled as a unitary actor with an exogenously given

level of information about the desirability of its policy choices. It is not clear why

the dispersal of information across chambers should be so much greater than within

chambers. Indeed, it is not clear why consolidating the two chambers into a single

unicameral chamber does not aggregate information at least as well as the bicameral

procedures.

A more general analysis of the role of bicameralism in aggregating information

can be grounded in models of voting under incomplete information and common

values—the so-called “Condorcet jury problem.” These models seem to suggest a

much more circumscribed informational beneﬁt of bicameralism.

Consider n legislators who must decide whether to choose policy 0 or policy 1.

They all have a common preference for choosing the correct policy. They each get

an independent signal about which policy is the common preference. We assume

that each player’s signal is correct with probability .

This model predicts that the

probability of making a correct decision under majority rule is an increasing function

of both committee size n and signal quality .

We can compare these results to bicameralism by dividing the n legislators into two

chambers. We assume that each chamber votes via majority rule. Now the probability

of making a correct decision depends on which policy is enacted when the chambers

disagree. However, if the disagreement policy turns out to be incorrect, bicameralism

would perform far worse due to the requirement that both chambers reach the correct

decision. Thus, the probability of a bicameral correct decision is much lower than that

for unicameralism since each chamber is smaller and thus more likely to produce the

¹⁸ A conference committee composed of members appointed from each chamber to negotiate

inter-chamber diﬀerences is a common way of ensuring that bills pass each chamber in an identical

form. Typically, a conference committee produces a ﬁnal bill or report which is voted up or down in each

chamber.

¹⁹ Allowing the signal quality to vary across individuals is unlikely to change our analysis so long as

signal quality does not vary systematically across chambers in the bicameral case.

michael cutrone & nolan mC carty 193

wrong decision. If the disagreement policy is the correct one, bicameralism would

do better since it requires two majorities to overturn the disagreement policy. Thus,

superiority of bicameralism would depend entirely on which outcome is designated

as the default. Of course, if they had this information ex ante, they wouldn’t need to

vote!

Another problem for bicameralism is that it will never be the ex post best decision

rule. Under unicameral majority rule, all legislators would agree ex post that it is best

to implement the majority’s preference. However, under bicameralism, all legislators

would like to reverse any decision that disagreed with the majority of all votes cast.

While the arguments based on the Condorcet jury models suggest that the require-

ment of concurrent majorities is unlikely to aggregate information better than simple

majority rule, bicameralism may still aﬀect the incentives of legislators to acquire

information and develop legislative expertise. If information conveys a legislative

advantage, bicameralism might induce inter-chamber competition in information

acquisition. On the other hand, if information is a public good, bicameralism might

induce more free riding. Rogers (1998) develops a game-theoretic model of the

decision of each chamber to become informed about the consequences of pending

legislation. His model predicts that the chamber with the lower information costs

generally obtains a ﬁrst mover advantage as the second chamber free rides oﬀ its

information. However, again it is not clear why the free-riding incentives across

chambers would exceed those within chambers. The same competition to obtain

agenda control by acquiring superior information would presumably exist within a

unicameral legislature.

6 Conclusions

.............................................................................

In this chapter, we have considered a number of theoretical arguments in favor of

bicameralism as an organizing principal for modern legislatures. Regardless of the

theoretical framework or the collective action problem to be solved, we ﬁnd that

both the positive and normative arguments in favor of bicameralism tend to be weak

and underdeveloped. Most of the eﬀects of bicameralism are due primarily to quite

distinct institutional choices, such as malapportionment and super-majoritarianism,

which correlate empirically with bicameralism. There seems to be no logical reason

why the beneﬁts of these institutions—like the protection of minority rights and the

²⁰ A critical objection to this analysis is that the legislators were non-strategic. In the bicameral

context, strategic legislators should condition their vote based on their beliefs in states of the world

where they would provide the tie-breaking vote in their chamber given their expectations of the outcome

in the other body. In a fully strategic model, Austen-Smith and Banks (1996) show that, for a given

legislature, priors, and signal quality, there is an optimal q-rule which fully aggregates all information

and makes the optimal decision given this information. Thus, a unicameral legislature using the optimal

voting rule would do at least as well as any bicameral arrangement.

194 bicameralism

preservation of federalism—could not be obtained by a suitably engineered unicam-

eral legislature or through vigorous judicial review.

One might respond to our analysis by suggesting that while the beneﬁts of bicam-

eralism are low, so are the costs. This may well be the case for the largely symbolic

upper chambers of advanced democracies. However, the costs could be quite large in

developing democracies if a misplaced faith in the virtues of bicameralism precludes

more eﬀective protections for political minorities.

References

Ansolabehere,S.,Snyder,J.,andTing,M.2003. Bargaining in bicameral legislatures: when

and why does malapportionment matter? American Political Science Review, 97: 471–81.

Austen-Smith,D.,andBanks,J.S.1996. Information aggregation, rationality, and the Con-

dorcet jury theorem. American Political Science Review, 90: 34–45.

Baron,D.P.1991. Majoritarian incentives, pork barrel programs, and procedural control.

American Journal of Political Science, 35: 57–90.

and Ferejohn,J.A.1989. Bargaining in legislatures. American Political Science Review,

83: 1181–206.

Binder,S.A.1999. The dynamics of legislative gridlock, 1947–1996. American Political Science

Review, 93: 519–33.

2003. Stalemate. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Black,D.1958. The Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Brady,D.W.,andVolden,C.1997. Revolving Gridlock: Politics and Policy from Carter to

Clinton. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Chiou,F.-Y.,andRothenberg,L.2003. When pivotal politics meets party politics. American

Journal of Political Science, 47: 503–22.

Cox,G.W.,andMcCubbins,M.2003. Legislative Leviathan Revisited.Unpublishedbook

manuscript.

and McKelvey,R.1984. A ham sandwich theory for general measures. Social Choice and

Welfare, 1: 75–83.

Crémer,J.,andPalfrey,T.R.1996. In or out? Centralization by majority vote. European

Economic Review, 40: 43–60.

1999. Political confederation. American Political Science Review, 93: 69–83.

Diermeier,D.,Eraslan,H.,andMerlo,A.2003. Bicameralism and government formation.

Working paper, Dept. of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.

and Myerson,R.1999. Bicameralism and its consequences for legislative organization.

American Economic Review, 89: 1182–96.

Druckman,J.N.,andThies,M.F.2002. The importance of concurrence: the impact of

bicameralism on government formation and duration. American Journal of Political Science,

46: 760–71.

Ferejohn,J.,andShipan,C.1990. Congressional inﬂuence on the bureaucracy. Journal of

Law, Economics, and Organization, 6: 1–20.

Hammond,T.H.,andMiller,G.J.1987. The core of the constitution. American Political

Science Review, 81: 1155–74.

michael cutrone & nolan mC carty 195

Heller,W.B.1997. Bicameralism and budget deﬁcits: the eﬀect of parliamentary structure on

government spending. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 12: 485–516.

Krehbiel,K.1998. Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking.Chicago:Universityof

Chicago Press.

Lijphart,A.1984. Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-

One Democracies. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

McCarty,N.2000a. Proposal rights, veto rights, and political bargaining. American Journal

of Political Science, 44: 506–22.

2000b. Presidential pork: executive politics and distributive politics. American Political

Science Review, 94: 117–29.

McKelvey,R.1976. Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and some implications

for agenda control. Journal of Economic Theory, 12: 472–82.

Poole,K.T.,andRosenthal,H.1997. Congress: A Political-Economic Theory of Roll Call

Vot in g. New York: Oxford University Press.

Public International Law and Policy Group 2003. Establishing a Stable Democratic Con-

stitutional Structure in Iraq: Some Basic Considerations. Century Foundation. Available

at: www.pilpg.org/areas/peacebuilding/simulations/iraq.

Riker,W.1992. The justiﬁcation of bicameralism. International Political Science Review, 12:

101–16.

Rogers,J.1998. Bicameral sequence: theory and state legislative evidence. American Journal of

Political Science, 42: 1025–60.

2001. An informational rationale for congruent bicameralism. Journal of Theoretical

Politics, 13: 123–51.

2003. The impact of bicameralism on legislative production. Legislative Studies Quarterly,

28: 509–28.

Schofield,N.1978. Instability of simple dynamic games. Review of Economic Studies,

45: 575–94.

Shapley, L., and Shubik,M.1954. A method for evaluating the distribution of power in a

committee system. American Political Science Review, 48: 787–92.

Tsebelis,G.1993. The core, the uncovered set, and conference committees in bicameral

legislatures. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Los Angeles.

and Money,J.1997. Bicameralism. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wood,G.1969. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787.NewYork:Norton.

part iv

..............................................................

INTERACTION

OF THE

LEGISLATURE,

PRESIDENT,

BUREAUCRACY,

AND THE

COURTS

..............................................................

chapter 11

..............................................................

THE NEW

SEPARATION-OF-

POWERS

APPROACH TO

AMERICAN

POLITICS

..............................................................

rui j. p. de figueiredo, jr.

tonja jacobi

barry r. weingast

1 Introduction

.............................................................................

American politics is undergoing a quiet revolution. The study of American poli-

tics has long been organized by sub-ﬁelds—Congress, the presidency, the courts,

and the bureaucracy. The advantage of this approach is that it allowed political

scientists to gain expertise on a relevant portion of American politics and to create

the scientiﬁc study of each institution. The liabilities of this approach are equally

∗

The authors thank Charles Cameron, Gary Cox, William Howell, Kenneth Shepsle, and Donald

Wittman for helpful comments.

200 the new separation-of-powers approach

clear: it has created somewhat of a silo approach to American politics in which

discoveries and knowledge in one sub-ﬁeld or silo tended to have little impact on the

others.

Since 1990, a new approach to studying American politics has emerged based on

rational choice methods that we call the “new separation-of-powers approach.” Often

more implicitly than explicitly, the traditional approach to American politics empha-

sized 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.

Although traditional scholars always recognized the eﬀect of one institution on an-

other, they had no way to provide a systematic characterization of these interactions,

many of which were instead characterized as caveats on the more general operation

of the primary institution. In contrast, the new approach sees the constraints posed

by other institutions as the foundational issue that deﬁnes the context, and thus the

nature, of an institution’s power to act.

The purpose of this chapter is to exposit the logic of the new approach and then

to draw its implications for American politics.

Although still in its early stages,

the new separation-of-powers approach has enhanced both theoretical and empir-

ical analyses. Essentially, it allows scholars at once to study interlinked phenomena

occurring in multiple institutions, which had previously not been systematically

considered.

The new approach embeds institutional actors in the political environments that

impose systematic constraints on them. For example, rather than seeing the president

as largely unconstrained, due to her broad powers, the new approach formalizes the

eﬀect of the president’s need to account for congressional authority and preferences.

This move is important because it implies that the characteristics and behavior of

outside actors are as important as those of actors inside an institution in explaining

variations in the behavior of the institution under study.

Moreover, the new approach demonstrates that these constraints can best be un-

derstood in a strategic context: to further their own goals, actors in each branch must

anticipate the reactions of actors in the other branches. Although students of Amer-

ican politics have always known this, the new models provide the game-theoretic

technology for studying how this occurs. For example, the judiciary is not seen in

isolation, even for judges with lifetime tenure. In the case of judicial determination

of the meaning of a statute, judges will take the likely congressional responses into

account. Because being overturned by Congress is costly, judges have an incentive to

act strategically in their decisions so as not to be overturned; and this requires making

decisions more favorable to Congress.

¹ The other chapters in this section survey the new literature as it applies to the presidency

(Cameron), bicameralism (Cutrone and McCarty), the bureaucracy (Huber and Shipan), and the courts

(McCubbins).

rui j. p. de figueiredo, tonja jacobi & barry r. weingast 201

Another potential for the approach involves its implications for empirical analysis.

The two biggest problems that hinder students of American political institutions are:

too few degrees of freedom and confounds to causality—including selection bias,

spuriousness, and simultaneous causality. As we show below, the new approach has

the potential to address both of these problems.

Lack of suﬃcient variation is a fundamental problem in the study of many Amer-

ican political institutions. Consider the case of the presidency: the United States has

had only forty-four presidents. This creates a “degrees of freedom problem:” the

number of relevant variables aﬀecting presidential choice vastly exceeds the number

of cases, making it diﬃcult to make inferences about presidential behavior. The ap-

proach provides an elegant solution to this problem in two ways. First, it increases the

number of cases by reconceptualizing the independent variable; many presidents face

variations in their environment, such as the partisan composition of the Congress.

Thus, the unit of analysis becomes not just a presidency, but a president–Congress

combination. Second, by incorporating other institutions, it allows scholars to study

interactions that happen over and over—in the case of the president these include

appointments, budgets, and vetoes.

More generally, the new separation-of-powers approach has helped authors

unpack causality. This is particularly diﬃcult for students of political institutions,

since causality tends to ﬂow both to and from the institution and other variables.

In most cases, to identify the unique causal eﬀects of a particular variable under

study, the solution is to look for other information, outside the phenomenon being

studied. The embrace of separation-of-powers models allows students to do this

by introducing st ructure—the constraints that institutions put on public oﬃcials in

making policy—and strategy—the way in which the actors involved condition their

behavior on that structure as well as other players’ actions or, importantly, potential

actions. The introduction of structure imposes constraints, which in turn help identify

causal eﬀects.

The ability to understand causality has resulted in repeated demonstrations that

appearances in American institutional politics can be deceiving. Studying an institu-

tion in isolation tends to make it appear more important and central to decision-

making than studying it within the separation-of-powers system. The reason is

that, when studying one institution in isolation, it is often easy to miss how be-

havior in that institution anticipates reactions from another (Weingast and Moran

1983).

For example, many observe the bureaucracy make choices without any systematic

political input from elected oﬃcials, and infer that the bureaucracy therefore chooses

the policy it wanted without much inﬂuence by elected oﬃcials. These scholars rely

on an internalist bureaucratic logic that focuses on the organization itself to explain

bureaucratic choices (e.g. Derthick and Quirk 1985;Wilson1980). The separation-

of-powers approach, in contrast, embeds the bureaucracy in a political context and

argues that bureaucracies face a complex incentive system. Bureaucratic oﬃcials

understand these incentives and, anticipating the likely reaction of interest groups

and political oﬃcials, make policy choices.