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In recent years the level of unity in parliamentary parties has continued to increase. Whereas in Congress the party leadership’s capabilities to solve collective action problems and to reduce transaction costs have been in doubt, in parliamentary systems little seems to warrant such doubt. Therefore, the paper’s aim is to trace the party leadership’s particular capabilities to secure party unity in parliamentary systems by means of 1. contract design, 2. screening and selection, 3. monitoring and information requirements, and 4. institutional checks. To the extent that these capabilities affect members differently, it is possible to sketch their contours on the basis of who the rebels are. It is apparent that discipline is not readily explained in terms of rewards and punishments. Factions and tendencies provide perhaps the most valid prediction for dissent in France and the United Kingdom, whereas in Belgium the extra-parliamentary party leadership and a detailed policy agreement have a strong impact on members’ discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers contemporary efforts to reform the constitutions in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Each of these countries has experienced growing political pressure to reform its constitution over the last ten to fifteen years. In some instances, these efforts predate this period and have become part of the political landscape. Some sources of this common phenomenon are unique to each country, while others are shared. The paper takes a comparative historical approach to consider the political and economic conditions in which these countries have experienced these growing political pressures to reform their constitutional arrangements. The paper?s purpose is to highlight what is common and what is unique to each of the contemporary cases. To this end, it is argued that international economic pressures are as important as the moment of constitutional founding in order to understand the contemporary debates. The paper relies on analytical frameworks developed by Douglas North and James Mahoney to consider domestic and international factors that have generated these reform efforts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops and evaluates empirically a signaling model on the use of time constraining rules in legislative bargaining. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers current parliamentary proposals on constitutional reform in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium from historical institutional and social choice perspectives. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]