Senators as Political Entrepreneurs: Using Bill Sponsorship to Shape Legislative Agendas

Schiller, Wendy J.

doi:10.2307/2111763

Cited by 280 publications

(222 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

213

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Figure 2009, legislative activity was higher than it was even in 1983 and 1985, after the interest rate hikes associated with the Volcker Revolution, and approached the maximum number seen, of 142 bills, in 1981. While this legislative activity might be dismissed as "grandstanding" or cheap talk, the time costs involved in initiating bills imply that legislative activity is a meaningful indicator of Congressional interest in a subject area (Schiller, 1995, Wawro, 2001 This new emphasis on MPP was in some ways ironic given the chilly reception shown to advocates of a macro-prudential approach under the Chairmanship of Bernanke's predecessor, Alan Greenspan (Baker, 2013). However, the adoption of macro-prudential concepts gave the The actions taken by the Fed may also have tempered the desire for radical change in Congress.…”

Section: The Fed's Role After the Financial Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Brave New World? Macro-prudential policy and the new political economy of the federal reserve

Goodhart

2014

Review of International Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Financial Crisis that started in 2007 ushered in new responsibilities for central banks, particularly for what is termed "macro-prudential policy," or MPP. The goal of this policy is to monitor and contain overall risk in the financial sector. Implementing MPP, however, carries the potential for distributional conflict with the largest financial firms and the politicization of central bank policy. In light of this risk, this essay analyses the institutional implications of MPP for a leading central bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve. Specifically, how will MPP affect the autonomy of the Fed to set the policy it thinks right? The analysis is based on interviews with financial regulators, including Fed staffers and policymakers, and with journalists who report on financial regulation. It is also informed by a case study of the "Volcker Revolution" in monetary policy. Based on these sources, I identify the factors that contributed to All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher nor be issued to the public or circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.Requests for permission to reproduce any article or part of the Working Paper should be sent to the editor at the above address.

show abstract

Section: The Fed's Role After the Financial Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Brave New World? Macro-prudential policy and the new political economy of the federal reserve

Goodhart

2014

Review of International Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As to parliamentary oversight, this is related to the (often US-specific) analysis of oversight relationships and bargaining processes between the bureaucracy and the legislator (Banks and Weingast 1992, Calvert et al 1989, Moe 1989, Niskanen 1971, 1975, Ogul and Rockman 1990, Rosenthal 1981, Weingast and Moran 1983, the (legislative) design of administrative procedures and ex ante control (Bawn 1995, 1997and McCubbins et al 1987, and the separation of powers (Persson et al 1997, Grossman andHelpman 2008). Our analysis also contributes to the limited body of research on the effectiveness of legislators (Grant and Kelly 2008, Padro i Miquel and Snyder 2006and Shiller 1995, and the German political science literature dealing with state legislatures and governmental-parliamentary relationships (Holtmann andPatzelt 2004, Patzelt 2005). Section 2 presents the main theoretical arguments about the incentives for parliamentary control with a focus on public servants elected to parliament.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight

Braendle

Stutzer

2012

Econ Gov

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, we propose a framework to integrate the identity of legislators in a politicoeconomic analysis of parliamentary oversight. Legislators decide about the effort they invest in oversight activities depending on their individual control costs and the level of electoral competition. We focus on public servants elected to parliament who face a conflict of interests but also have lower control costs due to their experience and information advantage. If held accountable, oversight becomes a relatively attractive activity for them to win votes. For German Laender, we find that the fraction of public servants in parliament is positively related to the number of submitted parliamentary interpellations. This result holds when instrumenting the fraction of public servants in parliament with its institutional determinants. Moreover, a mixed-member electoral system as well as a tighter race between the two biggest parties is related to more, a larger number of parties in parliament to less minor interpellations.

show abstract

“…This is surprising because even though bill sponsorship is a much costlier activity than cosponsorship, the latter has received a fair amount of attention (Campbell 1982;Krehbiel 1995;Kessler and Krehbiel 1996;Wilson and Young 1997). Related research has also examined how much effort or participation is devoted to legislative entrepreneurship (Bratton and Haynie 1999;Matthews 1960;Schiller 1995;Sinclair 1989;Walker 1977;Wawro 2000) but not how that effort is spent on shaping proposals. Similarly, previous research studies how bill content or sponsor characteristics affect legislative success (Ainsworth and Hanson 1996;Anderson, Box-Steffensmeier, and Sinclair-Chapman 2003;Frantzich 1979;Krutz 2005; Moore and Thomas 1990) but does not take the next step to examine how bill content was chosen in the first place.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Woon

2008

The Journal of Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Positions of influence over the legislative agenda provide greater opportunities for shaping policy outcomes. Do legislators take advantage of this? If they do, when the median is pivotal and legislators' goals reflect both position taking and policy seeking, greater influence over the agenda leads legislators to moderate their bills relative to legislators with lower agenda priority. Analysis of a formal game theoretic model provides rigorous justification for the proposition, and empirical analysis of House and Senate bills from the 101st to 108th Congresses using cosponsorship data to measure the ideological locations of bills largely supports it. Committee leadership and majority party status have moderating effects while the effect of committee membership is slight. The analysis also tentatively supports the pivotalness of the median over other alternatives. Contrary to the view that bill sponsorship is mere position taking, legislative organization significantly shapes early-stage legislative behavior. Specifically, greater legislative influence implies greater responsiveness to the median legislator.

show abstract

Senators as Political Entrepreneurs: Using Bill Sponsorship to Shape Legislative Agendas

Cited by 280 publications

References 15 publications

Brave New World? Macro-prudential policy and the new political economy of the federal reserve

Brave New World? Macro-prudential policy and the new political economy of the federal reserve

Political selection of public servants and parliamentary oversight

Bill Sponsorship in Congress: The Moderating Effect of Agenda Positions on Legislative Proposals

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About