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An essay examining the theory of regulatory capture is presented. Regulatory capture entails the routine 'capture' or manipulation of regulations by those supposed to be subject to them or by bureaucrats and legislators who write and control them. Regulatory capture takes various forms and if crafted more capture-resistant, regulations could best serve the public interest.

This article explains the unanticipated emergence of party-oriented legislators and rising party discipline in Brazil since the early 1990s. The authors contend that deputies in Brazil became increasingly party oriented because the utilities of party-programmatic and patronage-based electoral strategies shifted with market reforms that created a programmatic cleavage in Brazilian politics and diminished the resource base for state patronage. The study introduces new measures of partisan campaigns, party polarization, and values that legislators attached to party programs and voter loyalty based on an original survey of the Brazilian Congress. Regression analysis confirms that deputies who believe that voters value party programs have run partisan, programmatic campaigns, and those in polarized parties and those who believe voters are loyal to the party are willing to delegate authority to party leaders and do not switch parties. Party polarization and the proximity of deputies' policy preferences to their party's mean explain discipline on 236 roll-call votes in the 51st legislature (1999-2001). Keywords: Brazil; political parties; legislators; patronage; electoral campaigns

Little recent research on congressional parties has considered the relationship between the vast extended leadership and shifting partisan dynamics. This article draws on conditional party government theory to argue that elected House leaders use the extended whip networks to achieve somewhat different goals under weaker and stronger party government conditions and that these priorities are reflected in the whip systems' membership. Specifically, the whip system reflects caucus diversity under weaker party government but becomes disproportionately stacked with loyalists as party government conditions grow stronger; this shift reflects heightened leadership focus on agenda coordination and signaling under strong parties. The evidence on whip system composition and selection in the Democratic caucus (95th to 106th Congresses) provides very strong support for this argument. An examination of the Republican conference fails to support the main hypothesis but shows that the 1990s growing GOP majority whip network was unrepresentatively dominated by the cohort of junior members. Keywords: U.S. House of Representatives; congressional parties; party whips; conditional party government; extended leadership

This article examines Black and Latino legislators' use of bill sponsorship and cosponsorship in Congress. As we explain, sponsoring and cosponsoring legislation are unique in that they are among the few activities outside the roll call arena that have both position taking and policy implications. We hypothesize that given minority legislators' lack of influence in Congress, they sponsor and cosponsor fewer bills than do nonminorities. We find support for our expectation; on average, Black and Latino legislators sponsor and cosponsor significantly fewer bills in Congress than do Whites and non-Latinos, respectively. But we also find the relationship to be contingent on which party controls Congress. Whereas Democratic Congresses encourage minorities' bill sponsorship and cosponsorship, Republican Congresses depress it. Because the concepts of participation and representation in Congress are so intimately tied to one another, these findings have a number of implications for the study of descriptive and substantive representation. Keywords: Congress; legislative behavior; bill sponsorship; cosponsorship; race; ethnicity; members of Congress

This article examines politicians' changes of party labels during the life of a legislature. The authors view a legislator's choice of party as a strategic decision recurring throughout the parliamentary cycle. In their approach, individuals are open to switching parties as they pursue goals specific to the stage in the parliamentary cycle. Analyzing Italy and Russia, they identify among legislators in both countries patterns of heightened switching for office benefits, policy advantage, and vote seeking at distinctive moments in the parliamentary cycle. The commonalities across the two systems provide compelling support for their theoretical framework. The evidence also points to a midterm peak in switching in both countries. Differences appear, however, in the timing of preelectoral positioning--contrasts that the authors attribute to differences in the degree of party system institutionalization, the age of the democratic regimes, and thus the information available to players in electoral politics. Keywords: legislative parties; party switching; Russia; Italy; parliamentary cycle; midterm effect

Mixed-member systems have been characterized as encouraging politicians to balance the activities that enhance their personal reputations and those of their parties. Another literature challenges that legislators from one tier are not likely to behave differently from those of the other. After summarizing this debate, data from Venezuela are used to look for evidence supporting either side in a series of behaviors that span the entire legislative process--from bill initiation to committee consideration to final vote. The author concludes that the 'best of both worlds' versus 'contamination' debate has led to a focus on mixed-member institutions, to the exclusion of other incentive structures confronting legislators and that we need to engage in more careful theorizing about when and where they should expect the electoral tier to have an impact on legislator behavior. Keywords: mixed-member; electoral system; candidate selection; cameral rules

Existing theories of congressional politics emphasize partisan incentives for the behavior of formal party leaders in Congress. However, these theories do not persuasively explain important cases in which Speakers of the House have sought to influence legislative outcomes contrary to the policy preferences of their party. I argue that the majority party in the House allows the Speaker to act on behalf of several expectations for leadership that are unrelated or even contrary to partisan goals, including ones related to the agenda of the institutional presidency and the Speaker's personal preferences. As evidence for this claim, I introduce a data set of significant acts of legislative leadership by the Speaker since the 1940s, analyzing several cases from the data set. The findings suggest that our understanding of leadership in Congress may be improved by identifying the formal and informal duties and responsibilities of individual leaders and the broader contextual environment in which such leaders operate.

Although scholars have put enormous effort into developing models of legislative choice behavior, they may not have sufficiently considered the underlying choice process and its relationship to the institutional environment. Our analysis does so by jointly integrating more realistic models of legislator decision making with a historical perspective on institutional evolution. We apply a unified model, incorporating participation and vote choice in a theoretically and econometrically sensible manner, to roll call voting and participation choices in the 73rd (1933-1934), 89th (1965-1966), and 104th (1995-1996) United States Congresses. We consider whether the same factors affect behavior over time, whether abstention choices affect outcomes, and whether integrating voting and participation is advantageous. Our models fit the data well and reveal significant, intuitive, differences in decision making over time that are related to Congress's development and that are relevant for policy. Realistic models and an appreciation for institutional evolution are related and important for considering legislative choice behavior.

There is an urgent need to link social science research with policy making to address many key issues confronting countries across the globe. Policy makers need the benefit of social science research which is relevant, timely, trans-disciplinary, methodologically capable of capturing global and local trends, swift to respond to fundamental issues, and offering findings which are clearly articulated, effectively disseminated, and oriented to outcomes. For this a new partnership is needed between social scientists and policy makers. We can gain a clearer picture of the nature of this desired partnership by probing the dichotomy between the world of science and the world of policy making. The experience of UNESCO and its programme Management of Social Transformations provides some valuable lessons.

Months after the government gave an unprecedented $85 billion to AIG, the insurance giant released a list of counterparties, exposing some of the world's top financial institutions as the real [...]

Legislative incumbents at both the congressional level and the state legislative level have an advantage in electoral races (Jewell and Breaux 1988, 1991; Garand 1991; King and Gelman 1991). By using the perquisites of office many scholars believe that incumbents have brought about their own reelection success. However, many scholars argue that the quality of a challenger is one of the most important variables that affects the likelihood of incumbent success (Jacobson 1987, 1989, 1990). To this point, the research on challenger quality has been conducted almost exclusively at the congressional level. This article examines challenger quality and success at the state level by examining races for the state legislature across 10 states from 1988-1992. Using previous elected experience as a measure of challenger quality, I find that quality challengers are willing to challenge state legislative incumbents and are strategic in deciding when to challenge. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that when quality challengers run they are more likely to be successful.

In a unique cooperative relationship in foreign affairs between the executive and legislative branches, the president appoints and the Senate confirms two members of Congress each year to help articulate U.S. policies in the UN General Assembly. But crossing the separation of powers and acting as executive diplomats pose real problems for incumbent members of Congress. They must decide how to balance their ongoing obligations in Congress with their executive-diplomatic obligations in the Assembly when the sessions between the two coincide. In the Assembly, as members of the USUN they must depend on its executive leadership to accept and use them as meaningful actors. And they must decide whether to articulate executive-determined foreign policies when these conflict with those of their own. However these problems were resolved, on the whole both executives and legislators associated with the USUN in the period 1946-1990 agreed that each benefits significantly from such congressional participation. Nevertheless, in the 1980s it became clear that members of Congress, particularly senators, were increasingly reluctant to carry through on their part of this executive-legislative relationship.

Author(s): Ali Nouri Author Affiliations: Council of science advisers for US lawmakers -- as well as presidents The US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is composed of [...]

British government ministers are not making use of the latest research before introducing new policies, on the run up to the next election.