Introduction: Explaining the EU Political System PART I: GOVERNMENT Executive Politics Legislative Politics Judicial Politics PART II: POLITICS Public Opinion Democracy, Parties and Elections Interest Representation PART III: POLICY-MAKING Regulation of the Single Market Expenditure Policies Economic and Monetary Union Citizen Freedom and Security Policies Foreign Policies Conclusions: Rethinking the European Union Appendix: Decision-making Procedures of the European Union Bibliography

The political system of European Union

This is the first comprehensive critical evaluation of the use of rational choice theory in political science. Writing in an accessible and nontechnical style, Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro assess rational choice theory where it is reputed to be most successful: the study of collective action, the behavior of political parties and politicians, and such phenomena as voting cycles and Prisoner's Dilemmas. In their hard-hitting critique, Green and Shapiro demonstrate that the much heralded achievements of rational choice theory are in fact deeply suspect and that fundamental rethinking is needed if rational choice theorists are to contribute to the understanding of politics. In their final chapters, they anticipate and respond to a variety of possible rational choice responses to their arguments, thereby initiating a dialogue that is bound to continue for some time.

Pathologies of rational choice theory: A critique of applications in political science.

Scholars of the U.S. House disagree over the importance of political parties in organizing the legislative process. On the one hand, non-partisan theories stress how congressional organization serves members' non-partisan goals. On the other hand, partisan theories argue that the House is organized to serve the collective interests of the majority party. This book advances our partisan theory and presents a series of empirical tests of that theory's predictions (pitted against others). It considers why procedural cartels form, arguing that agenda power is naturally subject to cartelization in busy legislatures. It argues that the majority party has cartelized agenda power in the U.S. House since the adoption of Reed's rules in 1890. The evidence demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process in order to prevent bills that the party dislikes from reaching the floor.

Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives

The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the wide variety of regulatory processes, policies, and institutions in this country. Furthermore, students will develop a sophisticated and rigorous understanding of selected elements of regulatory politics, processes, and policies involving a regulatory agency of the U.S. government. To accomplish this, a variety of materials will be presented. These will involve reading, discussion and integration of the concepts of regulation, as well as understanding the processes by which regulatory policy is developed and implemented. Also, the impacts or results of such regulatory policies will be treated. In addition, students will gain a good deal of experience and develop techniques for conducting a diverse set of research and writing skills.

The politics of regulation

Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics

For a decade after the passage of the Second New Deal, political leaders and many important interest groups fiercely debated what procedural requirements, if any, should be imposed on the new regulatory agencies. This debate led eventually to the passage of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) of 1946. The purpose of this article is to explain the significance of the various procedural requirements that were considered, and to develop and test a political theory of why some proposals were passed while others were rejected, and why a decade passed before legislation could succeed. Although the APA typically is seen as a codification of individual rights in a system or procedural due process, we argue that to answer these questions requires understanding the policy consequences of alternative procedural reforms. Thus we develop and test a political theory, based on the views of legislators about the proper role of the federal government in regulating business, that seeks to explain patterns of support and opposition to legislative reforms. We conclude that the dominant factor explaining these patterns is support for New Deal regulatory policy, and that the primary explanation for the failure of administrative reform proposals before World War II but their success later was the desire of New Deal Democrats to `hard wire` the policies of the New Deal against an expected Republican, anti-New Deal political tide in the late 1940s.

The Political Origins of the Administrative Procedure Act

The political origins of the administrative procedure act

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Legislative Intent: The Use of Positive Political Theory in Statutory Interpretation

In the 1980s scholars began applying Positive Political Theory (PPT) to study public law. This chapter summarizes that body of research and its relationship to other schools of legal thought. Like Law and Economics, PPT of Law uses sequential game theory to examine how rules and procedures shape policy and evaluates these outcomes from the perspective of economic efficiency. Like the Legal Process School in traditional legal scholarship, PPT of Law focuses on how the structure and process of legislative, bureaucratic and judicial decision-making influences the law and evaluates these procedures using the principle of democratic legitimacy; however, rather than using procedural norms derived from moral and political philosophy to evaluate procedures, PPT of Law conceptualizes the decision-making procedures of government as rationally designed by elected officials to shape the policies arising from decisions by executive agencies, the courts, and future elected officials. After summarizing this theory, the essay turns to applications of this approach in administrative law and statutory interpretation.

The Political Economy of Law

The gulf between legal ideals and reductionist PPT provides a challenge for PPT: Is PPT necessarily reductionist, arguing that legal realism is misconceived and irrelevant? If not reductionist, then how are the two to be integrated in a manner that does more than give lip service to legal idealists? Our answer is that the two approaches can be integrated. Attention to normative issues by reelection-minded politicians can explain self-imposed procedural limits, such as those enacted in the Administrative Procedure Act, by noting that such limits serve political ends as well as normative ones.

McNollgast

Papers

The Political Origins of the Administrative Procedure Act

The political origins of the administrative procedure act

Legislative Intent: The Use of Positive Political Theory in Statutory Interpretation

The Political Economy of Law

Positive and Normative Models of Procedural Rights: An Integrative Approach to Administrative Procedures