American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Bicameralism and Its Consequences for the Internal Organization of Legislatures
American Economic Review
vol. 89,
no. 5, December 1999
(pp. 1182–1196)
Abstract
Theories of organization of legislatures have mainly focused on the U.S. Congress, explaining why committee systems emerge there, but not explaining variance in organization across legislatures of different countries. To analyze the effects of different constitutional features on the internal organization of legislatures, we adopt a vote-buying model and consider the incentives to delegate decision rights in a game among legislative chambers. We show how presidential veto power and bicameral separation can encourage a legislative chamber to create internal veto players or supermajority rules, while a unicameral structure can encourage legislators to delegate power to a leader.Citation
Diermeier, Daniel, and Roger B. Myerson. 1999. "Bicameralism and Its Consequences for the Internal Organization of Legislatures." American Economic Review, 89 (5): 1182–1196. DOI: 10.1257/aer.89.5.1182JEL Classification
- D72 Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior