Scott H. Ainsworth

Regulating Lobbyists and Interest Group Influence

In this paper, I analyze how legislators structure their interactions with lobbyists so as to limit undue interest group influence. A simple game theoretic model is developed to show that legislators have various means by which to control lobbying activity, even in the absence of stringent lobbying regulations. The costliness of the lobbyists signals limit the lobbyists ability to exaggerate claims.

MODELING POLITICAL EFFICACY AND INTEREST GROUP MEMBERSHIP

Traditionally, political efficacy is measured at the individual level and studied as an individual level attribute in isolation from macro level events. In many studies, political efficacy is viewed as largely static, affected primarily by levels of income and education. If, however, an individuals feeling of efficacy is partly conditioned on macro level occurrences or expected macro level occurrences, then individual efficacy cannot be studied in isolation from the macro level context. In this article, I create a game theoretic, micro level foundation for macro level interest group behavior. I use a simple participation game to model a form of individual level political efficacy and detail the empirical implications of the hypothesized individual level behavior for the aggregate levels of group membership. The results suggest that empirical studies of the effects of political efficacy on collective efforts are susceptible to sampling and measurement problems.

The Informational Role of Caucuses in the U.S. Congress

In this article we assess the ability of caucuses to complement and counterbalance the informa tional roles of the committee system. Corroborating earlier work, we find that caucuses are often composed of policy outliers. However, we also find that the caucuses in policy areas with outlying committees typically have memberships made up of outliers from the opposite side of the floor median. Given these findings, we conclude that the caucus system acts to counterbal ance the inherent biases of the committee system by providing the floor with an informational perspective unrepresented within the committee system.

Congressional Response to Presidential Signing Statements

Popular and scholarly accounts argue that signing statements are important tools for presidents to shape the implementation of policy. Although signing statements might be important presidential tools, the legislative branch stands in the most immediate and direct competition with the executive for ultimate control of the bureaucracy. In this article, we assess whether congressional committees react to presidential signing statements with increased oversight. Using a data set that includes every oversight hearing held by the U.S. House between 1995 and 2007, we find evidence that congressional committees are sensitive to the number of objections raised by presidents in signing statements. As the president uses signing statements to object to a larger number of provisions in laws, the affected House committees respond with more oversight.

Bill sponsorship and legislative success among freshmen senators, 1954–1986

Abstract Freshmen senators of the 1980s are often portrayed as more individualistic and activist than the freshmen of the 1950s. Freshmen today possess greater resources and appear much more likely to use those resources in whatever policy areas are of interest to them. One indication of this increased activism in the Senate is the dramatic increase in floor activity. Freshmen senators tightly bound by formal and informal restrictions in the 1950s have since gained important committee assignments and increased their staff. Despite their enhanced resources and increased activism in some areas, we found that freshmen senators from the 1980s were no more likely to sponsor legislation and were no more successful at passing their own legislation than the freshmen Senators of the 1950s.

Congressional Response to Statements of Administration Policy and Presidential Signing Statements

We explore the sensitivity of Congress to statements of administration policy (SAPs) and signing statements in the struggle with the executive over policy. We hypothesize that the nature and use of objections contained in these presidential communications generates additional congressional oversight. To test whether this happens, we developed a dataset with all SAPs, signing statements, and congressional oversight hearings from 1997 through 2007. The results indicate that the type and number of objections raised in presidential communications affects congressional oversight activity.

Delegation and Discretion in Anticipation of Coalitional Drift

If legislators are sensitive to coalitional drift, they must perforce be forward looking. In this article, we propose that legislators anticipate change in government—and any associated coalitional drift. That is, legislators recognize that the government could move from unified to divided or divided to unified. As such, how legislators structure an agency’s discretion may be affected by the current partisan control of the Congress and the White House as well as their anticipated partisan control. Using U.S. trade legislation data from 1890 to 1990, we find strong empirical evidence that legislators alter agency discretion prior to changes in the political status quo.

Lobbying Together: Interest Group Coalitions in Legislative Politics. By Kevin W. Hula. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. 208p.

Many political scientists like institutions, in particular exog- enous institutions, which guide and constrain actions and allow scholars to concentrate more narrowly on behaviors within well-defined settings. For the interest groups subfield, institutions tend to be more mercurial than those in other areas of American politics. For instance, fundamental aspects of Congress may be institutionalized, but groups and lobby- ists come and go. The environment of interests is ever changing. Characterizing the interactions between legislators and lobbyists is made more difficult because of the lack of clear institutional structures that guide or constrain behav- iors. The iron triangle concept was powerful and meaningful because it provided at the least a loose framework for the analysis of legislator-lobbyist interactions. Kevin Hulas new book follows the reasoning of Hugh Heclo and William Browne, who argue that the iron triangle concept is outdated and inappropriate. That convenient metaphor suggested an informal institutional structure that is simply no longer appropriate. Without the iron triangle, what can fill the void?

55.00 cloth,

Studies of the Supreme Court confirmation process have traditionally concentrated on factors that lead to Senate defeat of nominees (e.g., Scigliano 1971; Songer 1979; Palmer 1983; Segal 1987; Cameron et al. 1990; Ruckman 1993; Van Winkle 1994). Thus, they look at such institutional and political variables as presidential strength, timing, the partisan composition of the Senate, and whether an appointment may alter partisan coalitions on the Court. More recently, a separate body of literature has begun to examine

23.95 paper.

In a developing legislature, two types of stability are crucial for maintaining institutional viability. The first type of stability identifies legislative proposals that are invulnerable to majority rule voting cycles. The research addressing the implications of majority rule voting cycles has been rich and sustained, allowing scholars to address committee structures of institutionalized legislatures and norms. However, many formal theories of modern legislatures are not readily applicable to less structurally developed legislatures. In this paper, a simple majority rule game is used to illustrate two types of legislative stability: majority rule stability and stability against various obstructionary tactics including outright secession. For a developing legislature to become institutionalized, both types of stability are necessary.