Synder and Groseclose (2000) develop and apply an innovative method for detecting and estimating the frequency and magnitude of party influence in congressional roll call voting. This paper presents a framework for assessing to coefficient that the authors interpret as "party influence." The...

Four pure types of legislative organization are characterized as data generating processes for commonly used measures of preferences or, in the spatial vernacular, ideal points. The types of legislative organization are differentiated by their partisan versus nonpartisan nature of agenda...

On grounds of inclusion of undesirable votes (type I errors) and exclusion of desirable votes (type II errors), we question the convention of selecting only finalpassage votes for roll call analysis. We propose an alternative selection method based on the estimated salience and strategic...

Political parties are active when citizens choose among candidates in elections, and when winning candidates choose among policy alternatives in government. But the inextricably linked institutions, incentives, and behavior that determine these multistage choices are substantively complex and...

A framework is introduced for evaluating static micro-analytic theories in dynamic macro-political settings. Within the framework, two theories of lawmaking are compared. Analytically, the predictions of the theories are remarkably similar- almost to the point of being observationally...

Collective choice bodies throughout the world use a diverse array of codified rules that determine who may exercise procedural rights, and in what order. This paper analyzes several two-stage decision-making models, focusing on one in which the first-moving actor has a unique, unilateral,...

Motivated by the U.S. Congress's motion to recommit with instructions to report forthwith, a simple spatial model is analyzed to clarify the relationship between early-stage agenda-settings rights of a committee and/or the majority party, a late-stage minimum parliamentary right of the majority...

The minority party is rarely featured in empirical research on parties in legislatures, and recent theories of parties in legislatures are rarely neutral and balanced in their treatment of the two parties. This paper makes a case for redressing this imbalance. We identify four characteristics of...