Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

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International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

The ‘new institutionalism’ is a term that now appears with growing frequency in political science. However, there is considerable confusion about just what the ‘new institutionalism’ is, how it differs from other approaches, and what sort of promise or problems it displays. The object of this essay is to provide some preliminary answers to these questions by reviewing recent work in a burgeoning literature. Some of the ambiguities surrounding the new institutionalism can be dispelled if we recognize that it does not constitute a unified body of thought. Instead, at least three different analytical approaches, each of which calls itself a ‘new institutionalism’, have appeared over the past fifteen years. We label these three schools of thought: historical institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism, and sociological institutionalism.’ All of these approaches developed in reaction to the behavioural perspectives that were influential during the 1960s and 1970s and all seek to elucidate the role that institutions play in the determination of social and political outcomes. However, they paint quite different pictures of the political world. In the sections that follow, we provide a brief account of the genesis of each school and characterize what is distinctive about its approach to social and political problems. We then compare their analytical strengths and weaknesses, * An earlier version of this paper WLS presented at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and at a Conference on ‘What is Institutionalism Now? at the

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Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms

List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Preface and Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 PART I: VETO PLAYERS THEORY 17 One: Individual Veto Players 19 Two: Collective Veto Players 38 PART II: VETO PLAYERS AND INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS 65 Three: Regimes: Nondemocratic, Presidential, and Parliamentary 67 Four: Governments and Parliaments 91 Five: Referendums 116 Six: Federalism, Bicameralism, and Qualified Majorities 136 PART III: POLICY EFFECTS OF VETO PLAYERS 161 Seven: Legislation 165 Eight: Macroeconomic Policies 187 PART IV: SYSTEMIC EFFECTS OF VETO PLAYERS 207 Nine: Government Stability 209 Ten: Judiciary and Bureaucracies 222 Eleven: Veto Players Analysis of European Union Institutions 248 Conclusion 283 Bibliography 291 Index 309

Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work

The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

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The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

This book provides an incisive new look at the inner workings of the House of Representatives in the post-World War II era. Reevaluating the role of parties and committees, Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins view parties in the House - especially majority parties - as a species of 'legislative cartel.' These cartels usurp the power, theoretically resident in the House, to make rules governing the structure and process of legislation. Possession of this rule-making power leads to two main consequences. First, the legislative process in general, and the committee system in particular, is stacked in favor of majority party interests. Second, because the majority party has all the structural advantages, the key players in most legislative deals are members of that party and the majority party's central agreements are facilitated by cartel rules and policed by the cartel's leadership. Debunking prevailing arguments about the weakening of congressional parties, Cox and McCubbins powerfully illuminate the ways in which parties exercise considerable discretion in organizing the House to carry out its work. This work will have an important impact on the study of American politics, and will greatly interest students of Congress, the presidency, and the political party system.

Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House

Presents an alternative informational theory of legislative politics to challenge the conventional view

Information and legislative organization

Politicians and pundits alike have complained that the divided governments of the last decades have led to a legislative gridlock. The author argues against this, advancing the theory that divided government actually has little effect on legislative productivity. Gridlock is in fact the order of the day, occurring even when the same party controls the legislative and executive branches. Anchored to real politics, the author argues that the pivotal vote on a piece of legislation is not the one that gives a bill simple majority, but the vote that allows its supporters to override a possible presidential veto. This theory of pivots also explains why, when bills are passed, winning coalitions usually are bipartisan and supermajority sized. Offering an account of when gridlock is overcome and showing that political parties are less important in legislative-executive politics than previously thought, this text offers a perspective on American lawmaking.

Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking

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Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures

Political parties are prominent in legislative politics and legislative research. Using data from the 99th Congress, this article assesses the degree to which significant party behaviour – defined and operationalized as behaviour that is independent of preferences – occurs in two key stages of legislative organization: the formation of standing committees and the appointment of conferees. Four hypotheses are developed and tested. When controlling for preferences and other hypothesized effects, positive and significant party effects are rare. A discussion addresses some criticisms of this unorthodox approach and attempts to reconcile some differences between these and previous findings.

Where's the Party?

This paper combines an organization theory perspective with rational choice techniques to study legislative design. The specific focus is on how a legislature assigns members and transfers resources to standing committees with the aim of motivating committees to specialize and to share the benefits of specialization. The stimulus for the study comes from organization theory and a long tradition of empirical congressional studies. The main analytical tool, however, is a game of incomplete information. Several testable propositions about legislative organization are derived.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2111460

Keith Krehbiel

Papers

Information and legislative organization

Pivotal Politics: A Theory of U.S. Lawmaking

Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures

Where's the Party?

Organization of Informative Committees by a Rational Legislature