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"Heller, William B"
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Political parties and legislative party switching
Anâalise comparativa sobre filiaًcنao partidâaria, partido polâitico e sistema partidâario nos seguintes locais: Brasil, Europa, Râussia, Itâalia, Japنao.
Book
Dealing in Discipline: Party Switching and Legislative Voting in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988-2000
Compared to U.S. political parties, parties in Italy (and Europe generally) are quite cohesive. Rarely do members of parliament vote against their copartisans in legislative divisions. Yet in Italy in recent years, legislators switch parties with seeming abandon. Between 1996 and spring 2000, one out of four deputies in the Chamber of Deputies switched parties at least once, compared to only 20 switches in the U.S. Congress from 1947 to 1997 (Nokken 2000). We examine the relationship between switching and observed party unity in Italy by focusing on individual legislators' switching decisions and voting behavior. Overall, switchers move out of highly disciplined parties, suggesting that they switch partly in order to escape strong discipline.
Journal Article
Party Switching in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1996–2001
Almost one-fourth of the members of the lower house in Italy, the Chamber of Deputies, switched parties at least once between 1996 and 2001. Why would a legislator abandon one party and enter another during a legislative term? Starting from the basic assumption that politicians are ambitious, we examine electoral and partisan motivations for members of parliament (MPs) who switch parties. We conclude that party switching most likely is motivated by party labels that provide little information about policy goals and that pit copartisans against each other in the effort to serve constituent needs. Switching is especially frequent when ambitious politicians operate under heightened uncertainty.
Journal Article
Agenda Power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988-2000
We present strong evidence that governing coalitions in Italy exercise significant negative agenda powers. First, governing parties have a roll rate that is nearly 0, and their roll rate is lower than opposition parties' roll rates, which average about 20% on all final-passage votes. Second, after one controls for distance from the floor median, opposition parties have higher roll rates than government parties. These results strongly suggest that governing parties in Italy are able to control the legislative agenda to their benefit. We also document significantly higher opposition roll rates on decree-conversion bills and budget bills than on ordinary bills—results consistent with our theoretical analysis of the differing procedures used in each case.
Journal Article
Making Policy Stick: Why the Government Gets What It Wants in Multiparty Parliaments
The ability of multiparty coalitions to make policy is a puzzle. However closely they agree on policy, at election time parties compete against each other for a limited pool of votes. Since legislative alliances blur differences between parties, the ubiquity of party competition begs the question of what holds coalitions together to pass laws. Recent work by Huber (1996a) and others highlights the Prime Minister's ability to use the vote of confidence to keep rebellious coalition members in line. Attaching confidence to bills can be problematic, however, even suicidal under some circumstances. I argue that the authority to offer legislative amendments late in the process, when no one else can, protects the Minister in whose jurisdiction a bill falls. This \"last-offer\" authority holds enacting coalitions together and allows the Minister both to limit her losses from hostile amendments and use policy outcomes to punish parties that stray from the coalition fold.
Journal Article
Functional Unpleasantness: The Evolutionary Logic of Righteous Resentment
Economics experiments and everyday experience cast doubt on the assumption that people are self-interested. In divide-the-dollar ultimatum games, participants turn down offers that would make them objectively better off. Similarly, drivers stuck in a traffic jam fume at cars cruising by on the shoulder. Many stuck drivers would punish the moving ones if they could, even at some cost to themselves. Such strategies appear irrational because they make the punisher worse off than accepting the situation or offer. We examine explanations for costly punishment and relax the presumption that punishers themselves prefer cooperation, using evolutionary game theory to show how uncooperative punishers can support cooperation.
Journal Article
Political Denials: The Policy Effect of Intercameral Partisan Differences in Bicameral Parliamentary Systems
Bicameralism in legislatures affects both the legislative process and partisan competition. In the United States, divided partisan control of Congress has been found to lead to interparty logrolls and increased budget deficits. In parliamentary systems, it is generally assumed that similarly divided legislatures have little effect on policy. I argue, by contrast, that party discipline means that divided control of the legislature has the opposite effect: because cooperation dilutes party labels, parties have an interest in passing and claiming credit for policy, but also in preventing their counterparts from doing the same. The result is a game in which chamber majorities balance the desire to make policy with the need to differentiate themselves from each other (to the extent that they are different). I test the hypothesis of an inverse relationship between divergence and policy making in a nine‐country, TSCS regression of deficits on an index of chamber divergence.
Journal Article
Bicameralism and Budget Deficits: The Effect of Parliamentary Structure on Government Spending
In this study I look at the relationship between bicameralism and government budget deficits. The more actors there are who can kill legislation or influence its content, the more deals must be cut to pass a budget. Bicameralism sets up a bilateral veto game between legislative chambers, which leads to higher government budget deficits, all else constant. Since it is easier to cut deals to raise spending than to raise taxes, the need to cut deals across the chambers of a bicameral legislature generally leads to higher spending and, hence, higher deficits. I test this hypothesis on a sample of deficits from 17 countries, from 1965 to 1990.
Journal Article
Agenda power in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 1988-2000
We present strong evidence that governing coalitions in Italy exercise significant negative agenda powers. First, governing parties have a roll rate that is nearly 0, and their roll rate is lower than opposition parties' roll rates, which average about 20% on all final-passage votes. Second, after one controls for distance from the floor median, opposition parties have higher roll rates than government parties. These results strongly suggest that governing parties in Italy are able to control the legislative agenda to their benefit. We also document significantly higher opposition roll rates on decree-conversion bills and budget bills than on ordinary bills-results consistent with our theoretical analysis of the differing procedures used in each case. Reprinted by permission of the Comparative Legislative Research Center, University of Iowa
Journal Article