Why do majority congressional parties seem unable to act as an effective policy-making force? They routinely delegate their power to others internally to standing committees and subcommittees within each chamber, externally to the president and to the bureaucracy. Conventional wisdom in political science insists that such delegation leads inevitably to abdication usually by degrees, sometimes precipitously, but always completely.
In "The Logic of Delegation," however, D. Roderick Kiewiet and Mathew D. McCubbins persuasively argue that political scientists have paid far too much attention...

This book provides an incisive new look at the inner workings of the House of Representatives in the post-World War II era. Reevaluating the role of parties and committees, Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins view parties in the Houseespecially majority partiesas a species of "legislative cartel." These cartels usurp 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...

Just when Japan and the United States are both caught up in a major debate over the effectiveness of their governments, this volume offers new explanations of their comparative strengths and weaknesses. Why can Japan keep building nuclear power plants while it has a hard time building an information superhighway? Why is the opposite the case in the United States? Will political reform change public policy in Japan? Would it make a difference in the United States? This volume explains why and how. This is one of the few volumes on the two countries that offers detailed studies of value to...

Just when Japan and the United States are both caught up in a major debate over the effectiveness of their governments, this volume offers new explanations of their comparative strengths and weaknesses. Why can Japan keep building nuclear power plants while it has a hard time building an information superhighway? Why is the opposite the case in the United States? Will political reform change public policy in Japan? Would it make a difference in the United States? This volume explains why and how. This is one of the few volumes on the two countries that offers detailed studies of value to...

Most citizens seem underinformed about politics. Many experts claim that only well-informed citizens can make good political decisions. Is this claim correct? In The Democratic Dilemma, Professors Lupia and McCubbins combine insights from political science, economics and the cognitive sciences to explain how citizens gather and use information. They show when citizens who lack information can (and cannot) make the same decisions they would have made if better informed. As a result, they clarify the debate about citizen competence.

Scholars of the U.S. House disagree over the importance of political parties in organizing the legislative process. On the one hand, non-partisan theories stress how congressional organization serves members' non-partisan goals. On the other hand, partisan theories argue that the House is organized to serve the collective interests of the majority party. This book advances a partisan theory and presents a series of empirical tests of that theory's predictions (pitted against others). The evidence demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the...

Many social scientists want to explain why people do what they do. A barrier to constructing such explanations used to be a lack of information on the relationship between cognition and choice. Now, recent advances in cognitive science, economics, political science, and psychology have clarified this relationship. In Elements of Reason, scholars from across the social sciences use these advances to uncover the cognitive foundations of social decision making. They answer tough questions about how people see and process information and provide new explanations of how basic human needs, the...

The second edition of Legislative Leviathan provides an incisive new look at the inner workings of the House of Representatives in the post-World War II era. Re-evaluating the role of parties and committees, Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins view parties in the House - especially majority parties - as 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. Most of the cartel's efforts are focused on securing control of the legislative agenda for its members. The first edition of...

Advocates of parliamentary rule have been highly critical of presidentialism for dividing powers and providing the opportunity for gridlock between branches. Yet the great theorists of presidential rule saw in the same institutions a desirable combination of strong leadership with checks on executive discretion. These diverse assessments arise because we have surprisingly little comparative work on how presidential democracies function. The essays in this volume show, through case studies from Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe, how presidential democracies deal with the challenges of...

Advocates of parliamentary rule have been highly critical of presidentialism for dividing powers and providing the opportunity for gridlock between branches. Yet the great theorists of presidential rule saw in the same institutions a desirable combination of strong leadership with checks on executive discretion. These diverse assessments arise because we have surprisingly little comparative work on how presidential democracies function. The essays in this volume show, through case studies from Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe, how presidential democracies deal with the challenges of...