Journal of Theoretical Politics recent issues

Informative Party Labels With Institutional and Electoral Variation

Ashworth, S., de Mesquita, E. B. — 2008-06-16

We study a model of party formation in which the informativeness of party labels and inter-party ideological heterogeneity are endogenously and jointly determined in response to electoral incentives. Parties use screening to increase the cost of affiliation for politicians whose ideal points diverge from the party platform. Because affiliation decisions are endogenous, increased screening decreases ideological heterogeneity, improving the informativeness of the party label. The model allows us to examine how the level of screening responds to changes in both the institutional and electoral environments. We find that screening (and, consequently, the informativeness of the party label and ideological homogeneity) is decreasing in the power of the executive branch, the polarization of party platforms, and the average size of partisan tides.

Electoral Poaching and Party Identification

Kovenock, D., Roberson, B. — 2008-06-16

This article studies electoral competition in a model of redistributive politics with deterministic voting and heterogeneous voter loyalties to political parties. We construct a natural measure of `party strength' based on the sizes and intensities of a party's loyal voter segments and demonstrate how party behavior varies with the two parties' strengths. In equilibrium, parties target or `poach' a strict subset of the opposition party's loyal voters: offering those voters a high expected transfer, while `freezing out' the remainder with a zero transfer. The size of the subset of opposition voters frozen out and, consequently, the level of inequality in utilities generated by a party's equilibrium redistribution schedule is increasing in the opposition party's strength. We also construct a measure of `political polarization' that is increasing in the sum and symmetry of the parties' strengths, and find that the expected ex-post inequality in utilities of the implemented policy is increasing in political polarization.

Applying the Methodology of Mechanism Design To the Choice of Electoral Systems

Sgouraki Kinsey, B., Shvetsova, O. — 2008-06-16

In this article we inquire into the strategic intent behind the design of election laws. Presuming that institutional designers are strategic and rational, we identify the extent of information incompleteness as determining their objectives for rule choice. For different levels of information incompleteness, we assess empirically the validity of explaining actual choices with designers' electoral goals. Using parameter-specific predictions for players' institutional preferences (obtained from a game-theoretic model which assumes electoral success as the design goal) we find that design does not always meet the criterion of elections-aimed rationality (electoral rationalizability). We identify a structural difference between levels of electoral rationalizability in two sets of European electoral reforms, those that accompanied the late 19th—early 20th-century franchise expansion, and those during the post-communist franchise creation in East—Central Europe. For the later sub-sample we rely on a qualitative assessment of electoral rationalizability since extremely high levels of information incompleteness in these cases do not allow us to apply the model reliably. We provide evidence linking the structural difference in electoral rationalizability between the two sub-samples and the sub-sample variation in electoral rationalizability in the late 19th—early 20th century to the quality of information available to the designers.

Bribery and Favoritism in Queuing Models of Rationed Resource Allocation

Batabyal, A. A., Beladi, H. — 2008-06-16

Queuing mechanisms are commonly used in developing countries and in transition economies to allocate goods characterized by excess demand to citizens. Bribery and favoritism frequently accompany the use of such queuing mechanisms. Therefore, we first analyze a queuing model of resource allocation with bribery. Specifically, we determine the expected wait time of a citizen from the time he arrives to queue and the time he obtains the rationed good, the likelihood that a citizen illegally obtains n units of the rationed good, and the expected time a citizen spends being served by the public or private official. Next, we analyze a queuing model of resource allocation with favoritism. Using this model, we ascertain the mean arrival rate of the favored citizen and the likelihood that an ordinary citizen is bumped n times to provide the rationed good immediately to the favored citizen.

Foundations of Legislative Organization and Committee Influence

Kim, J., Rothenberg, L. S. — 2008-06-16

We revisit seemingly settled questions of legislative organization, specifying a more general, realistic, informational model than previously. While theorists, unlike empiricists, have commonly inferred that the floor lacks incentive to allow committee influence via gatekeeping, we find otherwise. By assuming that (1) legislators know more about the status quo than alternative proposals, and (2) committee authority is endogenously determined, we show for numerous realizations of floor-committee preference divergence that vesting committees with agenda-setting power under an open rule is preferred to either an open rule without agenda setting or a closed rule. Net of a closed rule, when committees can receive status quo payoffs from inaction, their sending a message, particularly with monopoly agenda setting, frequently transmits more information than under a pure open rule. As such, many situations exist where the floor will not want to use majoritarian mechanisms, such as discharge petitions or non-germane amendment authority, even if the committee chooses inaction. Although for different reasons than postulated by distributive theorists, gatekeeping and related features such as deference norms are sustainable equilibrium phenomena.

Uncertainty, Difficulty, and Complexity

Page, S. E. — 2008-03-13

In this article I clarify the often muddled distinctions between uncertainty, difficulty, and complexity and show that all three can enhance our understanding of institutional performance and design. To cope with uncertainty, institutions align incentives for information revelation; to handle difficult problems, institutions create incentives for diverse problem-solving approaches; and to harness complexity, institutions adjust selection criteria, rates of variation, and the level of connectedness. The distinction between complex systems and equilibrium systems also necessitates a discussion of the differences between the existence, stability, and attainment of equilibria and why, despite often being neglected, the latter two concepts are important to our understanding of institutions.

A Dynamic Model of Generalized Social Trust

Ahn, T.K., Esarey, J. — 2008-03-13

How does generalized social trust — a Trustor's willingness to allow anonymous Trustees to make decisions affecting the Trustor's own welfare without an enforceable contract or guarantee, despite the Trustees' incentives to exploit or defraud — come to predominate in a community? This article is organized around a theoretical argument about the dynamics of generalized trust. This argument is deduced from a formal model built on assumptions that are common in the existing literature on trust. We find three results. First, generalized trust and trustworthiness can thrive if reliable credentials allow people to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy partners. Second, under a system of credential-dependent trust, the proportion of trustworthy persons in the population tends to cycle between high and low levels in the long run. Hence, the model may explain the currently observed decline in generalized trust in the United States as a part of a long-term cycle. Finally, trustworthy types can coordinate to dampen the trustworthiness cycle and (under some conditions) maintain trustworthy types as the majority in a society.

Getting a Poor Return: Courts, Justice and Governing Coalitions and the Audits of Low-Income Taxpayers

Howard, R. M. — 2008-03-13

Many years ago Robert Dahl (1957) argued that the courts are rarely out of alignment with the dominant national political coalition and more recent scholarship has built on this argument. However, despite this, it is still a prevalent belief that courts protect the minority against the power of the majority. This article analyzes these views by examining the influence of the national coalition and courts on tax policy. The article shows that from 1994 through 2000 a shift to more low-income audits results from political and judicial influence on the agency. The dominant national political coalition, the Tax Court, and to a lesser extent the District Courts, are major players in setting and determining agency policy. This confirms what Dahl noted years ago, namely that the courts are rarely out of alignment with the dominant national political coalition, and actually enforce the policy preferences of the dominant political coalition.

Navigating the Legislative Divide: Polarization, Presidents, and Policymaking in the United States

Beckmann, M. N., McGann, A. J. — 2008-03-13

Polarization hallmarks contemporary Washington's political landscape. While an increasing literature examines the factors propelling this schism, theoretical work investigating its consequences has just begun. Building from a simple bargaining model in which an exogenous actor (e.g. the president) strategically allocates scarce `political capital' to induce changes in legislators' preferences, we examine how varying the chamber's preference distribution affects the policies that result. Instead of miring presidents' preferred policies in gridlock, the model shows that ideological polarization — in the form of a bimodal distribution — can actually enable a president to pass policies closer to his ideal than would have been possible under greater ideological homogeneity.

To Punish the Guilty and Protect the Innocent: Comparing Truth Revelation Procedures

Nalepa, M. — 2008-03-13

Any country in the aftermath of transition to democracy confronts the challenge of transitional justice, that is, the task of designing a system of procedures for holding perpetrators and collaborators of the ancien regime responsible for their past activity. Two important normative goals that transitional justice shares with any system of justice are avoiding false convictions (punishing the innocent) on the one hand, and false acquittals (letting the guilty go) on the other. Different systems of transitional justice will vary in the extent to which they fulfill these normative goals. In this article I offer an approach to the study of systems of transitional justice that distinguishes between confession-based and accusation-based truth-revelation procedures (CTRs and ATRs). Game-theoretic models of plea bargaining from the law and economics literature are adapted to compare CTRs to ATRs. I evaluate their performance with respect to avoiding false conviction and false acquittal. I establish plausible conditions under which CTRs perform better than ATRs and formulate propositions. The empirical implications are illustrated with three cases from East Central Europe.

The Legislative Median and Partisan Policy

Wiseman, A. E., Wright, J. R. — 2007-12-10

We show that the median legislator in the US House is unambiguously closer to the majority party median than to the minority party median. An important implication of this finding is that the median legislator is predisposed to support the majority party's policy agenda. Thus, in the event that the majority party organization exerts no influence over the legislative process, and in the event that all policies then default to the legislative median, policy outcomes will still substantially favor the majority party over the minority. We demonstrate that the legislative median moves predictably toward the majority party in response to changes in majority control and the size and ideological homogeneity of the two parties. Consequently, the median legislators' partisan predisposition increases and decreases in response to electoral change. We conclude that partisan and floor majority, or median, theories of lawmaking are more often complementary than conflicting, and that party activities in the electoral arena have implications for legislative partisanship.

Senate Elections With Independent Candidates

Heckelman, J. C., Yates, A. J. — 2007-12-10

Assuming strict two-party competition, policy balancing models of the US senate imply that senators from the same state will often be from opposite parties and have great ideological divergence. We analyze the effect of independent candidates on these implications. Our theoretical model implies the two state senators will generally not be from opposite parties and will be closer in ideological space than if they were elected under strict two-party competition. Empirical analysis of senate composition from 1991 to 2002 supports the theory.

A Spatial Model of Competitive Bidding for Government Grants: Why Efficiency Gains Are Limited

Ward, H., John, P. — 2007-12-10

With a view to improving public sector efficiency many governments now make public sector bodies competitively bid for funding. We model the bidding process as a game of spatial competition. Using Monte Carlo simulations we show that in efficient equilibria many bidding groups will not be under competitive pressure. The model suggests that this is because their ideal projects are inherently valuable for the funding agency and other groups cannot match this without departing so far from their ideal that they would rather not be successful. We test the hypothesis that competition will be limited largely to groups whose preferred projects are of medium quality on data from the UK Single Regeneration Budget. Using resubmitted bids to track the impact of competition, we find evidence consistent with this hypothesis.

Effort, Intensity and Position Taking: Reconsidering Obstruction in the Pre-Cloture Senate

Bawn, K., Koger, G. — 2007-12-10

Effort is a crucial element of the legislative process — writing bills, forming coalitions, crafting strategies, and debating. We develop a model in which legislative decisions are the product of competitive effort by two teams, one trying to pass new legislation, and the other to block it. Teams choose effort levels based on preferences over the policy outcome, political rewards for effort, and opportunity costs, and the team that produces more effort wins. We apply this model to four cases of major legislation from the pre-cloture Senate: passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, the Ship Purchase Act of 1915, the Ship Arming bill of 1917, and the adoption of the Senate cloture rule in 1917. These cases demonstrate the value of looking beyond legislative voting and the rules that structure it, and of including effort as a key element of the legislative game.

Bargaining in Committees of Representatives: The `Neutral' Voting Rule

Laruelle, A., Valenciano, F. — 2007-12-10

Committees are often made up of representatives, each of them acting on behalf of a group of individuals or constituency of different size, who make decisions by means of a voting rule which specifies what vote configurations in the committee can pass a decision. This raises the question of the choice of an `adequate' (in a sense to be specified) voting rule, given the different sizes of the groups that members represent. In this article we take a new departure to address this problem, assuming that the committee is a bargaining scenario in which negotiations take place `in the shadow of the voting rule' in search of consensus. That is, a general agreement is sought, but any winning coalition can enforce an agreement. In this context, the notion of a `neutral' voting rule, based on the compromise between equitableness and efficiency (or egalitarianism and utilitarianism) represented by the Nash bargaining solution, is founded, yielding a recommendation that differs from previous ones.

Justice Preferences and the Arrow Problem

Frohlich, N., Oppenheimer, J. A. — 2007-10-29

Arrow showed that there is no general way to aggregate non-interpersonally comparable preferences or welfare into either a sensible social choice or a social welfare measure. With majority rule the problem manifests itself as voting cycles. The standard response to this problem has been developing `spatial models' built on restricted preferences (or welfare). We develop an alternative family of solutions. By assuming a culturally accepted conception of justice within a utility function, we establish the possibility of sensible aggregate choice implementable via majority rule. Various assumptions regarding the form the utility function are discussed. Conditions for a Condorcet winner in a problem of pure redistribution are derived for a number of models. Some of the implications of this perspective for the theory of democracy are considered. Developing a normatively interesting social welfare function may require introducing normative concerns into the preferences of the individuals rather than just into the properties of the aggregation system.

Judgment Aggregation By Quota Rules: Majority Voting Generalized

Dietrich, F., List, C. — 2007-10-29

The widely discussed `discursive dilemma' shows that majority voting in a group of individuals on logically connected propositions may produce irrational collective judgments. We generalize majority voting by considering quota rules, which accept each proposition if and only if the number of individuals accepting it exceeds a given threshold, where different thresholds may be used for different propositions. After characterizing quota rules, we prove necessary and sufficient conditions on the required thresholds for various collective rationality requirements. We also consider sequential quota rules, which ensure collective rationality by adjudicating propositions sequentially and letting earlier judgments constrain later ones. Sequential rules may be path dependent and strategically manipulable. We characterize path independence and prove its essential equivalence to strategy proofness. Our results shed light on the rationality of simple-, super-, and sub-majoritarian decision making.

Learning in Hierarchies: An Empirical Test Using Library Catalogues

Hammond, T. H., Jen, K. I., Maeda, K. — 2007-10-29

The formal hierarchical structures of organizations can be expected to affect the organizations' behavior in many different ways. One kind of impact is that their structures may affect how their knowledge is organized. This is important because the different ways in which knowledge can be organized may affect what the organizations' decision makers learn from the information that their organizations have gathered, stored, and processed. However, rigorous testing of this general argument would not be easy, and so it would be useful if a preliminary means of assessment could be found so that we can better judge whether a full-scale test is warranted. Hammond (1993) noted that a library catalogue is also a formal structure for hierarchically organizing knowledge, which means that different kinds of cataloguing systems represent different ways of organizing knowledge. Two different kinds of cataloguing systems — the Library of Congress classification and the Dewey Decimal classification — are widely used in US libraries, and Hammond conjectured that these two different cataloguing systems will tend to bring different sets of books to the attention of library users; this in turn should be expected to have consequences for what the library users can most easily learn from the library. This article tests Hammond's conjecture in two university libraries, focusing on 40 classic books in political science. The results provide strong empirical support for the conjecture: although the two cataloguing systems do not appear to organize knowledge in completely different ways, what differences they do have nonetheless appear to have a striking impact on what users can most easily learn. Support is thus provided, albeit indirectly, for the general argument that how organizations are structured hierarchically should be expected to affect what organizational decision makers are able to learn.

What's Wrong With Eu Spatial Analysis?: The Accuracy and Robustness of Empirical Applications To the Interpretation of the Legislative Process and the Specification of Preferences

Junge, D., Konig, T. — 2007-10-29

EU legislative analysis has been enriched by insightful controversies over the interpretation of the policy process. This debate has concentrated on the interpretation of the process by focusing on the identification of the agenda setter and the relevance of voting weights, but little attention has been paid to the accurate specification of the second component of spatial analysis, the preferences of the actors involved. Although a misspecification can seriously distort the predictions of spatial theory, empirical applications often tend to reduce the number of dimensions, exclude actors' saliencies and assume continuous policy issues. Using computer simulation we show that spatial models are more robust to a misinterpretation of the policy process than to a misspecification of actors' preferences, and that their institutional elements are less decisive for the models' outcome predictions. Our empirical analysis confirms these results and provides detailed insights into the impact of the institutional and the preference component of spatial theory. We conclude that scholars should pay more attention to the accurate specification of the preference component of the models to improve our understanding of legislative decision making in the EU.

The Messenger Game: Strategic Information Transmission Through Legislative Committees

Li, T. — 2007-10-29

We challenge the generally accepted ally principle in legislative politics that a preference outlier committee will distort information to the legislative floor. If interest groups (or other third parties) are rational, they will withhold the most precise information for fear of committee misrepresentation. As a result, even preference outlier committees could be disciplined by their own ignorance not to distort the lobbyist message, as they are uncertain whether lying pays for the current situation or not. Our result calls into question the theoretical foundation of the influential preference outlier debate in legislative politics.