Journal Articles

The role of procedural commitment in informational theories of legislative organization

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Contrary to codified procedures, almost all informational theories of legislative organization assume that the House floor commits to a special rule for floor consideration prior to a committee proposal. Employing Gilligan and Krehbiel’s (1989b) theoretical framework, we demonstrate that whether or not to assume this procedural commitment has a profound impact on our understanding of how the floor can structure the committee’s incentives to reveal information. In particular, we find that several of Krehbiel’s (1991) primary hypotheses, particularly that regarding preference outliers, generally do not hold without procedural commitment. Underscoring the key role of procedural commitment in informational theories, our results not only open up important avenues through which to construct a more defensible foundation for informational theory but also offer the hope of reconciling discrepancies between theoretical predictions and empirical regularities.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Theoretical Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oak : sage publisher., 2011

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

09516298

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 23 no. 4, October 2011,pp. 532-558

Subject(s)

Legislative organization
Informational theories of legislative organization
Informational theory
Procedural commitments
Signaling games

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