Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Capitol Losses: The Mediocre Performance of Congressional Stock Portfolios, 2004-2008","authors":"Andrew C. Eggers, Jens Hainmueller","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1762019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1762019","url":null,"abstract":"Given the well-documented effects of public policy on financial markets, one would expect political insiders to be capable of enriching themselves through savvy investing. Consistent with this, two prior studies of stock trades in Congress conclude that members of both the House and Senate easily out-perform the market, fueling the perception that corrupt \"insider trading\" is widespread in Congress. In this paper, we point out serious shortcomings in existing studies on congressional investing and carry out our own analysis using financial disclosure data from the 2004-2008 period. We fi nd no evidence of either informed trading or above-market portfolio returns for Congress as a whole or any subset of members. In fact, the average investor in Congress underperformed the market by 2-3% annually during this period, suggesting that a substantial majority of members would have financially benefited from replacing their stock holdings with passive index funds. Our research suggests that widespread political \"insider trading\" in Congress is more myth than reality.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128467362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Legislative Oversight and the Quality of Democracy","authors":"Riccardo Pelizzo, Rick Stapenhurst","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2105585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2105585","url":null,"abstract":"The paper shows that the quality of democracy is significantly affected by a legislature's ability to perform its oversight function. Building on a growing body of research and analysing original data from 97 national legislatures, the paper first provides a theoretial justification for why legislative overisght may affect the quality of democarcy and then it performs extensive statistical analyses. The key conclusion of the paper is that while international organizations, that have devoted so much attention to legislative strengthening, were correct in suggesting that oversight effectiveness is important for making democracy work well, they need to change the focus of their legislative strengthening programs from increasing oversight capacity to ensuring that oversight capacity is put to good use.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"355 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115932167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Monetary Policy Deliberations: Committee Size and Voting Rules","authors":"Vincent Maurin, J. Vidal","doi":"10.1017/S0770451800002104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0770451800002104","url":null,"abstract":"How large should a monetary policy committee be? Which voting rule should a monetary policy committee adopt? This paper builds on Condorcet's jury theorem to analyse the relationships between committee size and voting rules in a model where policy discussions are subject to a time constraint. It suggests that in large committees majority voting is likely to enhance policy outcomes. Under unanimity (consensus) it is preferable to limit the size of the committee. Finally, supermajority voting rules are social contrivances that contribute to policy performance in a more uncertain environment, when initial policy proposals are less likely to be correct, or when payoffs are asymmetric.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121823984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is the Individual Health Insurance Mandate Constitutional?","authors":"John J. Painter","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2002734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2002734","url":null,"abstract":"The Supreme Court is about to hear a case of great legal and political importance. At issue is the constitutionality of the so-called “individual mandate” in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires most Americans to purchase health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a monetary penalty.The question is whether Congress exceeded its Constitutional power to regulate “Commerce...among the several States” (i.e., regulate interstate commerce) and to make laws “necessary and proper” to carry into effect that power. It’s unlikely the Obama Administration can justify the individual mandate as a regulation of interstate commerce. How can the failure to purchase health insurance in itself be considered commerce, let alone interstate commerce? If that is interstate commerce, what can’t Congress force us to purchase? For that reason, the outcome of the case will likely turn on whether the individual mandate is both “necessary” and “proper” to carry into effect Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. To succeed on the “necessary” test, the Obama Administration must make constitutional arguments that don’t have any logical limits and therefore give Congress vast powers over our lives, and this undermines its ability to show that the individual mandate also meets the “proper” test, which requires that it be consistent with “the letter and spirit of the constitution.”On its face, the individual mandate fails the \"proper\" test. It abandons the long-standing legal principle that legally binding contracts require mutual assent and cannot be coerced. This crosses a line the federal government has never crossed and effectively tramples on “The powers...reserved...to the people” under the Tenth Amendment. It is inconsistent with the fundamental concept of self-ownership that underlies the theory of natural rights in the Declaration of Independence - the idea that we own ourselves and, therefore, have the right to be left alone as long as we honor the equal right of others to be left alone.Beyond that, the Administration’s expansive view of the commerce power creates a sea of federal power limited only by islands of individual rights (and limits on using the commerce power to regulate non-economic activity), and that is inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution: It imposes virtually the same limits on federal and state power and, therefore, effectively gives the federal government the same “police powers” as the states. It puts liberty at risk by relying entirely on individual rights to protect us against things like mandated doctor visits and exercise. For example, the Supreme Court has found an unenumerated “right to liberty” only where there is no harm to others. The courts could easily decide that skipping annual physicals or living a sedentary life harms others by raising medical costs for some and insurance premiums for all. The Administration makes the following arguments to allay concerns about the threat to liber","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129090692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Posting Yourself Out of a Posting: Using Social Networks to Screen Job Applicants in America and Germany","authors":"J. Tenenbaum","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2020477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2020477","url":null,"abstract":"With more than 800 million active users on Facebook alone, the privacy issues raised by social networking sites are becoming increasingly important. Over the past few years, the information that users post to social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter has become the linchpin of a wide variety of legal disputes. As this area of American law is still evolving, the courts have yet to provide a clear answer with regard to the privacy a user of a social network enjoys in an employment relationship, specifically in the pre-employment context. As such, this note seeks to provide a solution for legislators as they consider the effectiveness of current employment and privacy protections in the evolving digital world.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115215017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dynamic Legislative Bargaining with Endogenous Agenda Setting Authority","authors":"Christopher S. Cotton","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1699211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1699211","url":null,"abstract":"Models of repeated legislative bargaining typically assume an agenda setter is randomly selected each period, even if the previous period agenda setter successfully passed a proposal. In reality, successful legislative agenda setters (e.g., speakers, committee chairs) tend to hold onto power. We propose two alternative models in which successful agenda setters retain power. In the first model, a successful agenda setter automatically keeps power. Such an assumption is easy to work with and results in a policy equal to that in a traditional non-repeated game. In the second model, an agenda setter requires the support of a legislative majority to retain power. Such an assumption is realistic and results in the most-equitable policy outcome. Compared to both of these models, the standard random-selection model exaggerates the agenda setter’s ability to extract rent from the legislative process, and underestimates the wellbeing of the legislative majority.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124678508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Full Parliamentarisation of the EU Without Changing the Treaties: Why We Should Aim for it and How Easily it Can Be Achieved","authors":"A. Jakab","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1958111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1958111","url":null,"abstract":"The two main reasons why democracy won the contest for the leading legitimacy claim in the modern world are its capacity to generate loyalty and its self-correction potential. In order to use these virtues, the European Commission (conceptualised as the government of the EU) should be elected solely by the European Parliament. According to the general perception, a modification of the treaties would be inevitable in order to achieve such a change. The paper attempts to show that this perception is wrong: there is another (currently more viable) way to achieve this outcome, which was successfully used a long time ago to reform the British constitutional system on a step by step basis. In the U.K., there is currently (and there was) no legal rule prescribing that the monarch has to appoint as Prime Minister the person who commands the majority support of the House of Commons. It is happening though, by a (legally non-binding) constitutional convention. After analysing the concept of constitutional conventions and its applicability to the EU, the paper reaches the conclusion that we can achieve a parliamentary system under the current legal regime, if politicians in the European Parliament have the ambition to take the necessary steps. If it happened, then the EU government system would become similar to some extent to today’s German system, where a party coalition in the lower chamber supports the government, and the upper chamber takes part substantively only in the legislation but not in the formation of the government.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128398518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Medierea în Italia (Mediation in Italy)","authors":"Alessandro Bruni","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1892336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1892336","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, the Law No. 69 of 18 June 2009 imposes a duty on Government to draft the texts aimed at setting up the mediation and conciliation for almost all the civil and commercial disputes. According to the Law, the purpose of mediation is to settle disputes. The eventual legislation will likely follow the established pattern employed for disputes involving companies, that lead to a high level of agreements (Decree-law No 5/2003).Therefore, from now on, the training process for mediators and the mediation proceedings shall not be carried out by an Italian practician, unless he/she will be able to establish he/she meet the criteria set by the Ministry of Justice.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"400 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123202792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dezvoltarea Conceptuală a Sistemului Judiciar al Republicii Amernia (Conceptual Development of the Judiciary in the Republic of Armenia)","authors":"Vahe Yengibaryan, Hrachik Sargsyan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1892344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1892344","url":null,"abstract":"By the constitutional amendments of November 27, 2005 the foundations of the second phase of judiciary reforms were laid in Armenia, and today it can be stated that by the end of the mentioned phase the country will stand on a new level of impartiality, independence and effectiveness of judiciary power. Thus according to Article 5 of the new main law it is stated that the state power in the Republic of Armenia is implemented based on the separation and balances of legislative, executive and judiciary powers.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"81 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132890215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Presidents and the Politics of Centralized Control: Regulatory Auditing at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs","authors":"Alex Acs, C. Cameron","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1884445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1884445","url":null,"abstract":"The emergence of a vast administrative state is a hallmark \"arguably the hallmark\" of modern government. As was quickly understood by Woodrow Wilson and other early students of American political development, the presence of gigantic standing bureaucracies with enormous scope and power presents not merely a problem in public administration; it presents a problem in brute politics. The crux of the matter, as a leading scholar of public management rather dryly notes, is that \"whoever controls the bureaucracy controls a key part of the policy process\" [Lewis 2008]. The problem of political control is acute for Congress. Not surprisingly, it became an analytical focus of the \"new institutionalist\" revolution in scholarship on Congress and the administrative state [McNollgast 1987], [Ferejohn and Shipan 1990], [Epstein and O'Halloran 1999]. But the problem of control is equally if not more acute for America's chief executive officer, the President: How can one man, aided by a relative handful of confederates, exert effective control over rule making in the agencies? Presidents, working diligently and with considerable ingenuity, have responded to the challenge by developing a remarkable set of tools for controlling policy making in the administrative state. Perhaps the most important is \"politicization,\" the systematic placement of loyal subordinates into supervisory positions within the agencies [Lewis 2008]. But others include: - Centralized budgeting [Tomkin 1998], - Direct command through executive orders [Howell 2003], - Centralized review and direction of the agencies’legislative programs [Rudalevige 2002], [Neustadt 1954], and - Reorganizing or terminating agencies [Lewis 2003]. One of the newest tools, and potentially a puissant one, is direct centralized review and revision of the agencies' proposed rules. This tool (innovated by the Nixon Administration but solidly institutionalized during the Reagan Administration, and then retained by every subsequent president) can be seen as the apotheosis of the centralizing tendencies of the American presidency, noted so crisply in Moe's classic analysis [Moe 1985]. The locus for the President's centralized review and revision of agency rules is the Office of Information and Regulatory A¤airs (OIRA) in the office of Management and Budget (OMB). In a very real sense, OIRA is the point of the spear in the President's battle to exert direct centralized control over agency rules.","PeriodicalId":125020,"journal":{"name":"Political Institutions: Legislatures eJournal","volume":"2013 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130471488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}