Return to November 2003 Titles
Fifteen years ago Gary W. Cox explained the democratization of parliamentary
government in England by the development of national political parties, coupled
with the cabinet’s control over the legislative process that Walter Bagehot
had called the “efficient secret” of the British Constitution. Five
years later Matthew Soberg Shugart and John M. Carey took that analysis as a
point of departure to show that in many Latin American countries weak,
particularistic parties and strong presidencies deprive voters of identifiable
choices between national policy alternatives. They called that the
“inefficient secret” of Latin American parliamentary systems. In the first
article in this issue of the Quarterly, Octavio Amorim Neto and Fabiano
Santos reexamine that conclusion as it applies to Brazil. With a careful
analysis of bills proposed and laws passed in the Chamber of Deputies in the
1990s, they find that opposition deputies propose bills on matters of national
policy in order to attract support for their presidential candidate. Both the
open list proportional representation electoral system with state-wide
constituencies, and the constitutional restriction on deputies’ right to
initiate appropriations and taxation measures, reduce the emphasis on pork
barrel legislation that the “inefficient secret” model of Latin American
parliamentary systems predicts. The authors conclude that when a stable
governing coalition supports the president in Brazil, the opposition can offer
voters a policy choice similar to that which exists in the British system.
Jeffery A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart III write about the unanticipated result
of the decision of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1839 to stop electing
its Speaker by secret ballot. The aim was to strengthen party ties by making
members accountable for their choices in the selection of officers and the
organization of the chamber. Efforts to establish open viva voce voting
in the selection of the House printer, an important position with power over the
valuable printing contract, had failed several times in contentious votes. But
once open voting was decided, it applied to the election of all House officers.
However, far from strengthening the influence of party on the organization of
the House, it strengthened the influence of regionalism by which the political
parties in the 1840s and 1850s were increasingly divided. Open voting
exacerbated regional divisions as an attentive regional press publicized the
voting alignments. Jenkins and Stewart’s study is an example of the
unpredictable consequences of procedural reforms.
In the last decade there has been an accelerated interest in bicameralism. The
subject has attracted scholars who have compared second chambers across
countries, scholars who have modeled intercameral processes, as well as
constitutional designers and reformers. Common to most of them is the belief
that a second chamber slows down the legislative process, a position famously
expressed by James Madison in The Federalist no. 62. But James R. Rogers
points out that the conception of two legislative chambers as veto players omits
the fact that each chamber can originate legislation as well as blocking the
other chambers’ proposals. If that is recognized, a second chamber can add to
the total volume of legislation, on the assumption that two small chambers may
originate more legislation than one large chamber. Rogers finds support for this
assumption. He strengthens that conclusion with evidence from four U.S. states
which at various times in their histories changed from unicameral to bicameral
legislatures or vice versa.
It is conventional wisdom that in the United States the ability of members of
Congress to provide tangible benefits to their constituencies improves their
reelection chances. But the evidence has been mixed. Michael S. Rocca examines
it by analyzing the influence of the removal of highly visible benefits—the
closing of major military bases in 1995—on the election margins of incumbent
members of Congress. He finds that base closings did hurt members’ vote
shares, affecting minority party members in their first terms more than others.
The research strengthens the evidence for “the electoral connection,” the
link between what members do for their districts and their prospects of
reelection.
In the final article in this issue, Marian L. Currinder reports research on the
strategies employed by members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the use
of funds they have acquired apart from those that finance their personal
election campaigns. How do they use these rapidly growing but little studied
contributions to their so-called “leadership political action committees”?
Currinder distinguishes among five possible strategies, examining the use of
these funds in four election cycles in the 1990s. She finds that when they are
in the majority, members use these funds to help incumbent candidates, what she
calls a “maintenance strategy,” but when they are in the minority, they
support outside challengers, an “expansion strategy.” In addition to these
partisan considerations, members use these funds to advance their own career
goals within the House.
—Gerhard Loewenberg