An ambitious synthesis, Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions attempts to reconcile a number of rational choice viewpoints to produce a comprehensive look at congressional institutions. While most theorists have presented their work as exclusive alternatives for understanding Congress, this volume reconsiders that basic premise. If in fact these approaches are mutually exclusive, what evidence favors one over the other? Could it be that these views focus on different aspects of a more complex puzzle? Kenneth A. Shepsle and Barry R. Weingast have assembled leading proponents of rational choice approaches to debate these issues. Some emphasize the problems of legislative decisionmaking under uncertainty and the role institutions play in providing incentives for relevant actors to provide information. Other theorists focus on political parties and emphasize the conditions under which parties exercise institutional authority and monitor institutional practices (or fail to do so). Still others investigate legislative delegation, both within and without the legislature. In debating the relationships between these research strands, the contributors not only provide powerful evidence for the power of formal modelling but also invite those involved in other modes of research to join the discussion. Thus the volume suggests how a more satisfying and complete model might emerge. Positive Theories of Congressional Institutions is a timely volume that will provide the foundation for all future work in this area. Contributors include John H. Aldrich, David P. Baron, Gary W. Cox, John A. Ferejohn, Morris P. Fiorina, Thomas W. Gilligan, Keith Krehbiel, John Londregan, Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. McCubbins, Forrest Maltzman, David W. Rohde, Kenneth A. Shepsle, Barbara Sinclair, Steven S. Smith, James Snyder, and Barry R. Weingast. Kenneth A. Shepsle is Professor of Government, Harvard University. Barry R. Weingast is Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

A comparison of rational choice models of Congress

Providing a comprehensive examination of the origins, development, and status of committees and committee systems in both the House and Senate, this edition carries on the book's tradition of comprehensive coverage, empirical richness, and theoretical relevance in its discussion of these essential and distinguishing features of our national legislature. While the second edition focused on the "post-reform" committee systems, addressed the shifts in the internal distribution of power, and hinted at the forces that had already begun to undermine the power of committees, this edition updates that analysis and looks at the reforms that evolvied under the Republicans. It offers complete coverage of the rules and structural changes to the House and Senate committee systems. It extends its discussion of committee power and influence in the context of the "Contract with America," Republican reforms, and the inter-party warfare on Capitol Hill.

First published in 1987, Congress: Structure and Policy is a review of congressional research from an institutional perspective. The selections blend theoretical material found in the fields of discussion theory, political economy, social choice and game theory, with classics on such standard topics as elections and campaigning, controlling the bureaucracy and oversight, norms of behaviour, committees and committee assignments reform, budgeting, presidential influence, and the party and its leadership. Together, these readings present an institutional theory of Congress. They are integrated in order to address both the short-run issue of how congressional institutions shape policy and the long-run question of why congressional organization has evolved the way it has. In their introductions to the chapters, the editors, Professors McCubbins and Sullivan, not only address the themes of the individual readings but place the chapters in the larger context of the political economy.

Legislatures are arguably the most important political institution in modern democracies. The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, written by some of the most distinguished legislative scholars in political science, provides a comprehensive and up-to-date description and critical assessment of the state of the art in this key area.

This book examines the notion that while states may differ in terms of ideology, economic system, and institutional architecture, their role as an organizing framework for system-wide political action and international relations is contingent on a series of competing and oftentimes mutually exclusive factors. This work clarifies factors that contribute to our understanding of the critical roles of systemic and sub-systemic elements of society and how they reinforce the reciprocal problems of human and social organizations, and the institutionalization processes that help to constrain them.

The human condition teems with institutions – intertemporal social arrangements that shape human relations in support of particular values – and the social scientific work developed over the last five decades aimed at understanding them is similarly vast and diverse. This book synthesizes scholarship from across the social sciences, with special focus on political science, sociology, economics, and organizational studies. Drawing out institutions' essentially social and temporal qualities and their varying relationships to efficiency and power, the authors identify more underlying similarity in understandings of institutional origins, maintenance, and change than emerges from overviews from within any given disciplinary tradition. Most importantly, Theories of Institutions identifies dozens of avenues for cross-fertilization, the pursuit of which can help keep this broad and inherently diverse field of study vibrant for future generations of scholars.