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A Theory of Competitive Partisan Lawmaking*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

Keith Krehbiel ,
Adam Meirowitz  and
Alan E. Wiseman
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Abstract

Motivated by polar extremes of monopartisanship and nonpartisanship inexisting literature on parties in legislatures, we introduce and analyze amore moderate theory of competitive partisan lawmaking. Thedistinguishing feature of competitive partisanship is that the minorityparty, although disadvantaged, has some guaranteed opportunities toinfluence lawmaking. Our analytic framework focuses on two dimensions ofparties in legislatures: agenda-based competition,operationalized as a minority party right to make an amendment to themajority party’s proposal, and resource-based competition,characterized as the ability of both party leaders to use transferableresources when building winning or blocking coalitions. Building on thecanonical model, we find that giving voice to the minority party in eitherone of these ways alone results in outcomes that, on the whole, are lesslopsided and more moderate than those predicted by the existing monopartisanand nonpartisan theories.

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Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 423 - 448
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Keith Krehbiel is the Edward B. Rust Professor of Political Science atthe Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Knight ManagementCenter, 655 Knight Way, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-7298(email: krehbiel@stanford.edu).Adam Meirowitz is the John Work Garrett Professor of Politics atPrinceton University, 040 Corwin Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544-1012(email: ameirow@princeton.edu).Alan E. Wiseman is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Lawat Vanderbilt University, PMB 0505, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN37203-5721 (email: alan.wiseman@vanderbilt.edu). An earlier version of thismanuscript was presented at the 2012 Annual Meetings of the MidwestPolitical Science Association, and an earlier version titled“Bipartisan Lawmaking” was presented at the 2011 Annual Meetings ofthe American Political Science Association in Seattle, Washington. Theauthors thank Larry Bartels, Gary Cox, Daniel Diermeier, Larry Evans,Nick Eubank, John Geer, Laurel Harbridge, Molly Jackman, JesseRichman, Eric Schickler, Ken Shepsle, Ken Shotts, Erik Snowberg,Razvan Vlaicu and seminar participants at Caltech, the Harris School,the University of Warwick, and Vanderbilt University, for helpfulcomments. In addition Jidong Chen provided excellent assistance. Toview supplementary material for this article, please visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2014.41

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