LEGISLATIVE INSTITUTIONALIZATION: HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK (original) (raw)

Congressional Institutionalization: A Cross-National Comparison

Legislative Studies Quarterly, 2016

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

Institutional design and legislative conflict

Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 1996

This article develops a comparative institutional framework for evaluating the new legislatures of the former Soviet Union, and demonstrates that the conventional wisdom about the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet is wrong. It was not a totalitarian, Soviet institution whose omnipotent and malevolent Chair singlehandedly dominated policy outputs and controlled the membership. Rather, the Supreme Soviet's non-partisan, committee-centered design enabled the committees to dominate the legislative process and to virtually exclude conflict, even on such objectively contentious legislative issues as the annual budget. However, the non-partisan design denied the legislature the mechanisms for controlling the Chair on non-legislative, political issues, particularly in relations with the executive branch. On legislative issues, the Supreme Soviet was a well-oiled machine, but on political issues it was out of control, thus leading to the legislature's demise. This article demonstrates the utility of an institutional framework for comparing post-communist legislatures, and the necessity of disaggregating legislative and political issues when evaluating legislative performance. Copyright 0 1996 The Regents of the University of California. The conventional wisdom about the defunct Russian Supreme Soviet is at best a gross exaggeration, at worst simply wrong. Western and Russian observers alike see the Supreme Soviet as a traditional, totalitarian institution, whose omnipotent and malevolent Chair singlehandedly dominated policy outputs and controlled the membership.' They also blame its supposedly uncontrolled, budget-busting, spending *The author would like to thank Irina A. Andreyeva and the staff of the Parliamentary Library of the Russian Federation Federal Assembly for generous and kind assistance in providing me access to the stenograms and other Supreme Soviet materials; the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies and the

The Deinstitutionalization (?) of the House of Representatives: Reflections on Nelson Polsby's “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives” at Fifty

Studies in American Political Development, 2018

This article revisits Nelson Polsby's classic article “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives” fifty years after its publication, to examine whether the empirical trends that Polsby identified have continued. This empirical exploration allows us to place Polsby's findings in broader historical context and to assess whether the House has continued along the “institutionalization course”—using metrics that quantify the degree to which the House has erected impermeable boundaries with other institutions, created a complex institution, and adopted universalistic decision-making criteria. We empirically document that careerism plateaued right at the point Polsby wrote “Institutionalization,” and that the extension of the careerism trend has affected Democrats more than Republicans. The House remains complex, but lateral movement between the committee and party leadership systems began to reestablish itself a decade after “Institutionalization” was published...

On the Institutionalization of Congress(Es) in Latin America and Beyond

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012

This paper proposes an agenda for the study of the determinants and the processes by which strong policymaking institutions emerge, with emphasis on the most central democratic institution: the legislature. It reviews extant theories of institutionalization, and proposes further ways of specifying and studying the concept. It emphasizes the notion that investments and beliefs are the driving force of Congress institutionalization and of its relevance in the policymaking process. Making use of several indicators of Congress institutionalization, it provides evidence suggesting that Congress institutionalization has an impact on the qualities of public policies and on economic and social development outcomes. It also explores some "constitutional" factors that may promote Congress institutionalization. Given that a central theoretical argument of this paper is that the institutionalization of legislatures is a process that includes various self-reinforcing dynamics, the paper also undertakes the preliminary steps in developing a comparative case study of the evolution of Congress institutionalization in two Latin American countries: Argentina and Chile.

THE APPRENTICESHIP OF CHILEAN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS (1834-1924) FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE THEORY OF LEGISLATIVE INSTITUTIONALIZATION

REVISTA CHILENA DE DERECHO Y CIENCIA POLITICA (TEMUCO) 2, Nº 2, 2011, pp. 107-131

This article analyzes the historical development of Chilean congressional leadership offices , while testing a proposition of the theory of legislative institutionalization that says that legislatures gradually move toward greater boundedness over time. The indicator of boundedness is the length of the apprenticeship of congressional leaders. Lateral entry, short office tenure, and returning leaders became distinctive features in the case at hand. Institutional design and exchanges between the legislature and the environment determine legislative institutionalization, so a legislature institutionalizes by acquiring stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and sustainability in a polity.

The Responsive Legislature: Public Opinion and Law Making in a Highly Disciplined Legislature

British Journal of Political Science, 2007

This article analyses how institutional and contextual factors explain the approval of presidential initiatives -presidential legislative success -in highly disciplined and cartelized assemblies. Of particular importance is to test whether public opinion, the electoral cycle and the use of different institutional rules affect the approval of presidential initiatives in Congress. Using a multilevel Bayesian model of legislative success, I model bill approval rates at individual and aggregate levels. This strategy is extremely flexible, allowing us to disentangle the different institutional and contextual factors that determine the approval of presidential initiatives in the Argentine Congress.

Professionalism, institutionalization and committee services in US. state legislatures

2007

This thesis examines the relationship between legislative professionalism and institutionalization in the committee systems of six US states. I examine whether increased professionalization, as defined by increases in levels of member salary, legislative staffing, and time in session, causes legislatures to institutionalize in a manner similar to the US Congress. Specifically, this thesis focuses on the use (or lack thereof) of seniority as an automatic procedure for the assignment to, and transfer between, committees.

New Institutionalism, Parliamentary Behavior and Constitutional Interpretation

2020

Parliamentary behavior is a subject that is under explored by jurists in Brazil. Commonly referred to as the object of political science, Brazilian constitutional theory was little concerned with analyzing its relationship with the constitutional interpretation performed on the daily basis of ordinary politics. Based on an interdisciplinary reading, using the exploratory method, the study intends to expose the theoretical paradigm of new institutionalism of rational choice, which appears as a central aspect of the theory of parliamentary behavior, using its contribution to evaluate the impact of institutions on legislative constitutional interpretation. It concludes, in the end, that legal studies are lacking to consider institutional implications in the interpretation of the Constitution.