Abstract
The theoretical efforts in the rational choice approach to explain the law-making process in United States Congress have been increasingly matched by attempts to test the relative explanatory powers of different theories (Cox and McCubbins 2005; Krehbiel et al. 2005). No such effort has so far been made by scholars of parliamentary democracy, and this chapter tries to fill this gap. We present a typology of law-making models in parliamentary democracies based on the distribution of agenda-setting and veto power in the legislative arena. This allows us to contrast a particular adaptation of the procedural cartel model with two different versions of the veto player theory (Tsebelis 2002).Using the roll calls of 10th to 15th Italian legislatures, we evaluate, via cut points distribution, the explanatory power of these law-making models under a large variety of political circumstances (different party systems, different legislative sponsorship as well as all possible types of government format).
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- 1.
A partial exception are the papers published on the Cox and McCubbins website: http://www.settingtheagenda.com.
- 2.
The situation is perfectly specular when M is on the right side of the government range. On the contrary, when M is on the government range, the gridlock area is delimited by the two extreme government parties VPL and VPR.
- 3.
If M > VPR > VPL, then according to the VPM2 model, the remarkable density of cut points should be observed around VPL and M and if VPL < M < VPR, around VPL and VPR.
- 4.
To check the robustness of the results, we replied the analysis using a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo Method (see Clinton 2007). The ideal points estimations in the two case are highly correlated (R-Pearson’s: 90%). On the relationship between the Nominate and the Bayesian method, see Carroll et al. (2009).
- 5.
Italian Senate does not record the voting activity electronically. Therefore, the last step of the legislative process was not necessarily taken into consideration. Because of the Italian bicameralism and the so called shuttle system (“navette”), not all bills that have been passed in the Chamber of Deputies become laws and a bill about the same issue can reach the floor voting stage more than once.
- 6.
The authors recoded the absence as negative vote only for MPs belonging to parliamentary groups with at least 30 members and only when at least 90% of them were absent and the remaining MPs voted “nay” or abstained. The absence of MPs belonging to smaller groups was recoded only when at least a group of 30 members respected the previous conditions.
- 7.
According to the rules of the Italian Chamber of deputies, MPs who were absent because of their involvement in an institutional mission were not considered, unlike the other MPs, in counting the quorum that validates the vote. As their behaviour was completely “neutral” to the vote outcome, they were considered missing.
- 8.
The data are available on request from the authors.
- 9.
By estimating the MPs ideal points and using them to find the position of a party, the party is not treated as a unitary actor. On the contrary, any possible divergence in the voting pattern of its members, as well as its degree and nature, is allowed to affect the estimate of party’s position. Cox et al. (2008) use a different strategy in their study of the Italian case. First, they consider a party to have voted Yea or Nay to a given bill if the majority of its members voted Yea or Nay to it. Second, they apply a roll-call analysis, similar to the one employed here, directly to parties’ voting patterns, instead of to MPs voting pattern’. However, by so doing, they run the risk of underestimating any possible conflict – even if marginally – within a given party. This is a typical ecological fallacy.
- 10.
This fact, under plausible assumptions, will clearly under-estimate the “truth” level of intra-cabinet policy conflict as it appears from the NOMINATE analysis. We therefore explicitly accept the possibility of a selection bias when using roll call votes (see Carrubba et al. 2006, 2008; Hug 2006; Roberts 2007). However, we also recognize that this possibility, while hampering the utility of roll-call analysis as an exogenous source for measuring policy preferences of legislators, does not create an insurmountable obstacle for our analysis.
- 11.
Data available upon request.
- 12.
For each Parliament analysed, the cut points are drawn from a normal distribution where the mean and variance parameters correspond to the estimated sample mean and variance of that real Parliament’s cutpoints. In particular, a Montecarlo simulation was run in which 500 “virtual” cut points were drawn a thousand times from the same normal underlying distribution.
- 13.
The normal distribution was utilized, because of an a priori affinity which is reinforced by the actual distribution of cutpoints. Employing a uniform distribution just strengthens the results of this study.
- 14.
Similar efforts to test the lawmaking models in the American Congress show lower performance levels. See Stiglitz and Weingast (2009).
- 15.
As mentioned in the previous section, the Prodi govment is considered with RC included.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Stefano Iacus, Fabio Franchino, Marco Giuliani,Ulrich Sieberer and all participants to the conference “Reform Processes and Policy Change” for helpful comments and discussions. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Italian Ministry for Research and Higher Education, Prin 2007 prot. scrwt4 “Legislative process and policy arenas. Games, vetoes and networks in the age of the Italian political alternation”. All data to replicate this study, as well as tables omitted because of space limitations, are available at: http://www.sociol.unimi.it/ricerca/parlamento/index.html.
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Curini, L., Zucchini, F. (2011). Testing the Law-Making Theories in a Parliamentary Democracy: A Roll Call Analysis of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (1988–2008). In: König, T., Debus, M., Tsebelis, G. (eds) Reform Processes and Policy Change. Studies in Public Choice, vol 16. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5809-9_9
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