III Governmental and Administrative Institutions / Institutions Politiques et Administratives
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208345211065589 |
776
III
GOVERNMENTAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTIONS
INSTITUTIONS POLITIQUES ET ADMINISTRATIVES
71.7510 ALEXANDER, David A. — The Committee Secretariat of the
European Parliament: administrative mobility, expertise
and keeping the legislative wheels turning. Journal of Leg-
islative Studies 27(2), 2021 : 227-245.
This paper offers a novel perspective on the benefits provided by the ro-
tation of administrators within legislative systems, by explo ring the Com-
mittee Secretariat (CS) of the European Parliament (EP) and their role as
a source of information utilised by legislators. Using qualitative interviews,
I provide an original outlook on the expertise of the Committee Secretariat
after the entrenchment of career mobility practices. I find that the advent
of mobility, where administrators are moved into a new position after a set
number of years, is altering the culture of the Secretariat away from area
specialists and towards greater concentrations of highly adaptable gener-
alists. [R, abr.]
71.7511 ASHTON, H. Benjamin ; MUNIS, B. Kal — Information va-
lence and evaluations of Congress and individual legisla-
tors: experimental evidence regarding negativity bias in
politics. Legislative Studies Quarterly 46(2), May 2021 : 525-
558.
We use a survey experiment to assess whether negativity bias affects vot-
ers’ judgments of the legislative effectiveness of Congress (MCs) and
Congress as an institution. These political actors allow us to evaluate vot-
ers’ perceptions of somewhat impersonal attitudinal objects (MCs) and
very impersonal attitudinal objects (Congress as an institution). We find
strong evidence of negativity bias, where individuals tend to place more
weight upon negative information when evaluating MCs/Congress, and re-
quire less negative information to make an overall negative judgment of
these actors. Specifically, our experiments indicate that less negative in-
formation is required to reach a judgment than is positive information. Sim-
ilarly, our evidence suggests that voters are quicker to punish politicians
and institutions for negative behavior than to reward them for positive be-
havior. [R, abr.]
71.7512 BASABE-SERRANO, Santiago ; HUERTAS-HERNÁNDEZ,
Sergio — Legislative override and particularistic bills in
unstable democracies: Ecuador in comparative perspec-
tive. Journal of Legislative Studies 27(2), 2021 : 266-284.
This article addresses, in a comparative perspective, the conditions under
which legislatures find greater incentives to overcome a presidential veto.
The authors’ framework points out that the legislative override is used se-
lectively, essentially when the presidential veto is in particularistic bills, and
in the context of unstable democracies. To test their theoretical argument
the authors used an unpublished database on bills processed in Ecuador
between 1979 and 2019. Though theories of veto bargaining predict the
override success rates should be 50 per cent, the authors show that, sim-
ilar to the US, in Ecuador the override success is relatively low. Although
the effective number of political parties is a statistically signifi]
71.7513 BEIM, Deborah ; CLARK, Tom S. ; LAUDERDALE, Benjamin
E. — Republican-majority appellate panels increase exe-
cution rates for capital defendants. Journal of Politics 83(3),
July 2021 : 1163-1167.
We use the quasi-random assignment of cases to three-judge panels on
the US Courts of Appeals to assess the consistency of adjudication of
death penalty appeals. We find clear evidence that panels apply different
standards depending on whether a majority of the panel was appointed by
Democratic or Republican presidents. Unlike previous work on panel ef-
fects in the US Courts of Appeals, we show that these effects persist to
the end of the process of adjudication. Since the early 1980s, the proba-
bility of ultimate execution has been increased for inmates when their first
court of appeals case was assigned to a panel with a majority of Republi-
can appointees. [R]
71.7514 BOLLEYER, Nicole ; SALAT, Orsolya — Parliaments in
times of crisis: COVID-19, populism and executive domi-
nance. West European Politics 44(5-6), 2021 : 1103-1128.
This article assesses the extent to which European governments’ legal
strategies to address the COVID-19 pandemic enhanced executive
autonomy to the detriment of parliamentary policy-making power, defined
as the formal ability of parliaments to constrain executive rule-making. Ap-
proaching the reduction in parliamentary policy-making power as one indi-
cation of ‘executive aggrandisement’, it contrasts the prominent claim in
the literature that populist governments tend to use emergencies to
weaken formal checks on executive power with a hypothesis derived from
research on crisis policy making, associating such tendencies with unified
executives lacking internal checks and balances. Assessing six European
governments’ legal strategies between January 2020 until spring 2021, the
formal weakening of parliaments’ role in law-making was more pronounced
among ‘unified executives’ than governments including major populist par-
ties. [R, abr.] [See Abstr. 71.7890]
71.7515 BUTCHER, Jordan — Rethinking retirement: ambition in
term-limited legislatures. Journal of Legislative Studies
27(2), 2021 : 285-299.
Political careerism has long focused on the idea of progressive ambition,
rarely using retirements as a measure. The end of a legislator's career can
reveal how term limits have changed the institution and legislative behav-
iour. Term limits, intended to curb legislative careers, have unintentionally
led to changes in career ambition. The rate at which members retire is
dependent on the type of term limit that a member faces and the institu-
tional incentives to continue service. This comparative analysis uses re-
tirement rates as a proxy for static, career-oriented ambition and reveals
that there is a decreased probability of term-limited legislators retiring. The
decreasing retirement rate indicates a lesser-known pathway for static am-
bition. Although ambition is typically viewed as those who move upward, it
is also about those who rethink retirement and choose to continue serving.
[R]
71.7516 BYERS, Jason S. ; SHAY, Laine P. — Position taking on the
president’s agenda. Political Behavior 43(2), June 2021 :
495-516.
We argue that electorally vulnerable members serving in the House of
Representatives are more likely to engage in position-taking, via casting a
roll-call vote rather than abstaining, on a certain subset of legislative votes.
We suggest that roll-call votes that the president has publicly addressed
should be especially ripe for legislators to engage in position taking be-
cause of the executive branch’s unique influence on electoral politics for
legislators. When examining all roll-call votes in the 84th through the 112th
Congress in the House of Representatives, we find that members who
barely won their last election are associated with a higher attendance rec-
ord on roll-calls that the president has revealed his preferences on. [R,
abr.]
71.7517 CASIRAGHI, Matteo Cesare Mario ; TESTINI, Francesco —
Appeals to authority in political rhetoric: Machiavelli in the
Italian Parliament 1945-1994. Parliamentary Affairs 74(2),
Apr. 2021 : 333-353.
There has been little attention to how politicians employ intellectuals’ au-
thority and theories in their discourses. We offer methodological directions
to navigate th is territory, combining qua ntitative and qualitative analyses
to investigate the employment of Machiavelli’s figure in the Italian Parlia-
ment. We show that Machiavelli is regarded as a contested authority and
that appeals to his arguments can perform different rhetorical functions,
which are countered with different rhetorical tactics. In particular, we show
that the right appropriates the realist Machiavelli, especially in foreign pol-
icy, both as a national symbol and as a legitimate source of insights on
political affairs, while the left and the centre resist these claims with alter-
native rhetorical tactics. Finally, we provide an original dataset and a new
theoretical framework for future. [R, abr.]
71.7518 CONVERY, Alan, et al. — Questioning scrutiny: the effect
of Prime Minister’s Questions on citizen efficacy and trust
in Parlia ment. Journal of Legislative Studies 27(2), 2021 :
207-226.
In most democratic regimes, the public often dislikes and distrusts parlia-
mentarians. This should not surprise: the public likes neither compromise
nor conflict, both of which are legislative hallmarks. One of th e most
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