IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v23y2011i4p532-558.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of procedural commitment in informational theories of legislative organization

Author

Listed:
  • Fang-Yi Chiou

    (Academia Sinica, Taiwan, fchiou@gate.sinica.edu.tw)

Abstract

Contrary to codified procedures, almost all informational theories of legislative organization assume that the House floor commits to a special rule for floor consideration prior to a committee proposal. Employing Gilligan and Krehbiel’s (1989b) theoretical framework, we demonstrate that whether or not to assume this procedural commitment has a profound impact on our understanding of how the floor can structure the committee’s incentives to reveal information. In particular, we find that several of Krehbiel’s (1991) primary hypotheses, particularly that regarding preference outliers, generally do not hold without procedural commitment. Underscoring the key role of procedural commitment in informational theories, our results not only open up important avenues through which to construct a more defensible foundation for informational theory but also offer the hope of reconciling discrepancies between theoretical predictions and empirical regularities.

Suggested Citation

  • Fang-Yi Chiou, 2011. "The role of procedural commitment in informational theories of legislative organization," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(4), pages 532-558, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:23:y:2011:i:4:p:532-558
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629811418141
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629811418141
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629811418141?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thompson, Alexander, 2006. "Coercion Through IOs: The Security Council and the Logic of Information Transmission," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 1-34, January.
    2. Diermeier, Daniel, 1995. "Commitment, Deference, and Legislative Institutions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(2), pages 344-355, June.
    3. Keith Krehbiel, 2004. "Legislative Organization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 113-128, Winter.
    4. Krehbiel, Keith, 1990. "Are Congressional Committees Composed of Preference Outliers?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(1), pages 149-163, March.
    5. Shepsle, Kenneth A. & Weingast, Barry R., 1987. "The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 85-104, March.
    6. Banks, Jeffrey S & Sobel, Joel, 1987. "Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 647-661, May.
    7. Epstein, David, 1998. "Partisan and Bipartisan Signaling in Congress," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 183-204, October.
    8. Hall, Richard L. & Grofman, Bernard, 1990. "The Committee Assignment Process and the Conditional Nature of Committee Bias," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(4), pages 1149-1166, December.
    9. Krehbiel, Keith & Shepsle, Kenneth A. & Weingast, Barry R., 1987. "Why are Congressional Committees Powerful?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(3), pages 929-945, September.
    10. Gilligan, Thomas W & Krehbiel, Keith, 1987. "Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 287-335, Fall.
    11. Krishna, Vijay, 2001. "Asymmetric Information and Legislative Rules: Some Amendments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(2), pages 435-452, June.
    12. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jaehoon Kim & Lawrence S. Rothenberg, 2008. "Foundations of Legislative Organization and Committee Influence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 20(3), pages 339-374, July.
    2. Adam Ramey, 2015. "Bringing the minority back to the party: An informational theory of majority and minority parties in Congress," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 132-150, January.
    3. Alan E Wiseman, 2013. "Information and political institutions," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(3), pages 301-308, July.
    4. Keith Krehbiel, 2004. "Legislative Organization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 113-128, Winter.
    5. Krahmer, Daniel, 2006. "Message-contingent delegation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 490-506, August.
    6. Hong Min Park, 2012. "Why does the majority party bother to have minority party members on committees?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 24(2), pages 248-264, April.
    7. Frisell, Lars, 2000. "Taking Advice from Imperfectly Informed Lobbyists: When to Match Hawks with Hawks," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 355, Stockholm School of Economics.
    8. Battaglini, Marco & Lai, Ernest K. & Lim, Wooyoung & Wang, Joseph Tao-Yi, 2019. "The Informational Theory of Legislative Committees: An Experimental Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 55-76, February.
    9. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2008. "Contracting for information under imperfect commitment," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 905-925, December.
    10. Hongbin Cai, 2009. "Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 173-189, March.
    11. Wim Van Gestel & Christophe Crombez, 2014. "The role of oversight committees in closed rule legislation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(4), pages 521-547, October.
    12. Lubensky, Dmitry & Schmidbauer, Eric, 2018. "Equilibrium informativeness in veto games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 104-125.
    13. Ryan J. Vander Wielen, 2013. "Why conference committees? A theory of conference use in structuring bicameral agreement," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(1), pages 3-35, January.
    14. Klaas J. Beniers & Otto H. Swank, 2003. "On the Composition of Committees," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-006/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    15. Galeotti, Andrea & Ghiglino, Christian & Squintani, Francesco, 2013. "Strategic information transmission networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 1751-1769.
    16. Moser, Peter, 1999. "The impact of legislative institutions on public policy: a survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    17. Ambrus, Attila & Azevedo, Eduardo M. & Kamada, Yuichiro & Takagi, Yuki, 2013. "Legislative committees as information intermediaries: A unified theory of committee selection and amendment rules," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 103-115.
    18. Mylovanov, Tymofiy, 2008. "Veto-based delegation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 297-307, January.
    19. Ambrus, Attila & Lu, Shih En, 2014. "Almost fully revealing cheap talk with imperfectly informed senders," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 174-189.
    20. Anke S. Kessler, 2014. "Communication in Federal Politics: Universalism, Policy Uniformity, and the Optimal Allocation of Fiscal Authority," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(4), pages 766-805.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:23:y:2011:i:4:p:532-558. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.